Dominion of the Damned (22 page)

Paula knocked on the door and let herself in as Hannah took a deep breath to steady the butterflies in her stomach. Time go go see what her new normal looked like.

TWENTY-SIX

As it turned out, Zach didn’t particularly care what she wore, just as long as she showed up. Nevertheless, she changed into her scrubs once she got there. They made her feel more like a real nurse, even though so far the work Zach had given her was more suitable for a filing clerk. She spent the first few hours sorting research notes and organizing files. “That’s the stuff I never have time to do,” he’d explained, and that much was obvious. The place was a mess.

“It’s time to feed the rats,” he told her after she finished filing a stack of data. “Their food’s up in that cabinet.”

Hannah found the food, and then she found the rats. She hadn’t even noticed them, tucked away in the corner. Four of them slept in a pile in one corner of a large, glass tank. A fifth had a cage of its own off to the side. “Be careful with number five,” Zach called. “Be sure you wear the gloves on top of the cage, and don’t get your hands too close to her. She’s infected.”

Hannah looked from Zach to the caged rat and back again. “She’s a zombie rat?”

“Not yet. But she’s a carrier.”

“Why infect rats?”

To his credit, Zach didn’t look at her like it should have been obvious, even though she realized after she asked that it was. “To test the efficacy of the vaccine, we have to introduce the virus.” He pointed to Number Five. “That was the latest formula, and it didn’t work. The virus still took hold. Poor thing’ll probably be dead by the end of your shift.”

Hannah frowned at the doomed creature. The rat looked healthy enough at first glance, but her moves were sluggish, and she didn’t seem interested in the food Hannah poured in her dish. “Shouldn’t we put her out of her misery?”

Zach sighed. “I wish we could, but we need to see how long it takes her to die. We’ve made some progress in slowing down how long it takes for the virus to kill. Or transform, as the case may be. It’s not exactly the desired outcome, but it is progress.” He pushed back from his work station and stood up. “Speaking of which, I need to collect a new sample.” He smiled at Hannah. “It’s time to introduce you to Bob.”

“Bob? You mean that shambler you keep in the old jail?”

Zach looked disappointed. “You already know about that?”

“Chris told me,” she said, and left it at that. She took off the gloves and put away the rat food, then found her tote bag where she’s stashed it and took out the Sig.

If Zach was surprised that she carried a gun, he didn’t show it. “You won’t need that. Bob’s strapped down.” Hannah tucked it in the back of her waistband anyway, and Zach shrugged. “All right, if it makes you feel better. Let’s go.”

She was a little surprised to see that it was still light outside, even though it was only seven o’clock and still summer. It felt like she’d been stuck in that windowless cave of a lab for more than just a few hours. Zach led her to the old fort, and in the late afternoon light she could see why Chris had thought it was worth showing it to her. Every building there was at least a hundred years old, full of history and ghosts of the past.

The old jail was a squat white stucco building with a wide wooden front porch. She could hear Bob’s muffled groans as she followed Zach up the steps and through the front door. Inside, Hannah found herself surrounded by wood. The flooring and paneling looked like it was probably original to the building, and the room held a couple of antique-looking desks. Historical plaques stood next to each, and more plaques hung on the wall, along with portraits of men in uniform and paintings of scenes right out of the Old West. “This place was a museum before,” said Zach. Before what went without saying. Iron cages lined the back of the room, and next to them was a doorway that opened onto a set of descending stairs. A mindless moan floated up those stairs, and Hannah shuddered.

“This way,” Zach said as he started down the stairs. Reluctantly, Hannah followed him, pulling the gun from her waistband as she went. The grip felt reassuring in her hand.

“Down here’s where they kept the most dangerous prisoners,” Zach told her. “The walls of the cells are three feet thick, with heavy doors made of oak and iron, and no windows.” He paused in front of one of such doors and pulled a key out of his pocket. He fit it into a modern-day padlock and unlocked it. “They kept Geronimo in this one.” He opened the door.

The smell of rotting meat assaulted them, making Hannah’s stomach churn. She had to swallow against her gag reflex as she followed Zach into the tiny cell. Inside, strapped to a gurney, lay Bob. Except he didn’t lie there so much as writhe and squirm. The sight of him made her want to gag some more. His skin showed visible signs of decay, and it had mostly sloughed off where the restraints came in contact with it. His lips were missing, and as he strained toward them and gnashed his teeth, she saw that his tongue was gone, too. The flesh on the bottom half of his face had mostly rotted away.

Zach pulled a pair of gloves out of one pocket and put them on. From the other pocket he drew a scalpel and forceps, along with an empty vial that he handed to Hannah. “This’ll just take a sec,” he said as he leaned over Bob and began carving out a small chunk of his thigh. If the grotesque creature on the gurney felt the scalpel cutting into him, it was impossible to tell. Zach grasped the sample with the forceps and turned back to Hannah. She tucked the gun under her arm and opened the vial so he could drop it in. She secured the lid and handed it back to Zach, who put everything back in his pockets and stripped off his gloves. “That’s it.”

A hand grabbed Zach’s sleeve. He let out a high pitched scream as it yanked him back, and as Bob pulled him down his other hand, or what was left of it, slipped free of its restraint. It grabbed Zach around the back of the neck and tried to pull him down toward those gnashing teeth. Hannah pointed the gun and fired. Bob’s head exploded like a melon, and his hands went limp.

Zach fell backward on his rear and scrambled back against the wall, breathing hard. “Shit!”

Hannah brandished the gun. “Thought you said I wouldn’t need this.”

He pointed accusingly at Bob. “
That’s
never happened before!”

“That’s no reason not to expect it.” She reached down to help him up. After a few deep, calming breaths, he examined the corpse. Raw flesh and gray skin coated the wrist restraints and lay globbed up on the gurney. Hannah had to suppress the urge to vomit.

Zach’s face had gone pale. “He just slipped his
hands
off, like they were
gloves
.”

“That is so nasty,” said Hannah. “Can we get out of here now?”

“We have to clean this up. We’ll need to burn the body and disinfect the cell. And I’ll need to ask Carl to get me another sample.”

“Another sample?”

He looked at her. “Another
shambler
,” he clarified. “And we’ll have to figure out how to make sure
that
doesn’t happen again.” He sighed and dug the vial back out of his pocket. “Here. I’ll take care of clean-up. You get this back to the lab, and get it into refrigeration. Oh, and it’s about time for the doc’s wakeup call. He stays on the top floor. Get a couple bags of plasma from the tissue bank and take them up to him. You might have to buzz him a few times before he wakes up and answers the door.”

A feeling spread through Hannah’s chest. She couldn’t tell whether it was anticipation or dread. “You want me to come back here and help when I’m done?”

“No thanks, I’ve got it. He’ll probably have some work for you once he gets downstairs.” She nodded, and turned to go. “Hey,” said Zach, and she paused outside of the cell. “Thanks,” he said. “You saved my life.”

Hannah smiled, and nodded. Then she went to wake the doctor.

TWENTY-SEVEN

She found the elevator to the top floor. It let out into a short hallway with a set of wooden double doors at the opposite end. On the wall next to the door was an electronic key sensor, and above that, a doorbell. She pushed it, and inside a buzzer sounded. Hannah waited, fidgeting with the plasma bags in her hands. She wondered who it had come from. Who would he be having for breakfast?

After a moment, she buzzed again, remembering what Zach had said about it sometimes taking a few tries. Another long moment passed. She was about to try knocking when the door opened. Alek stood there, looking rumpled and groggy, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue boxer briefs. His eyes widened as he looked at her. “Hannah.” He looked down at what he was wearing—or not wearing, as the case may be—and stepped back. “Sorry. I was expecting Zachary. Come in.”

“He sent me to wake you,” she said as she stepped inside. Her gaze swept his apartment, taking it all in… looking everywhere except at him. She held out the plasma bags. “And bring you breakfast.”

He sighed, and she glanced at him as he took the bags from her. “Thanks,” he said, sounding irritated. Or was it embarrassed? “Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’ll go put something on.”

She opened her mouth to make an excuse to leave, but it died on her lips as her mind went blank. Instead she nodded, and caught herself stealing a glimpse as he left. She blew out a breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding, and then she tried to fill her head with visions of Chris. But as she tried to remember their kiss from the night before, Chris’s face morphed into Alek’s, and the way he kissed her was anything but sweet and gentlemanly.

“Stop it,” she muttered, and made herself remember the bags of blood she’d just brought for him to feed on. For all she knew, that was
Chris’s
blood. The thought made her slightly queasy. She tried to distract herself by looking around the room.

If he had converted his living quarters from office space, it was hard to tell. The room was painted a cheerful, buttery yellow color, definitely not something you’d expect to see in a vampire’s lair. There were no windows. In the lamp light, it looked cozy and inviting. Furniture was sparse, just a dark green sofa and a glass coffee table, with a floor lamp next to the sofa. A bookcase lined one wall, filled with paperback Westerns, of all things. Something about the idea of Alek reading obsessively about cowboys and gunfights made her smile. There were also medical books and books on science. And there were pictures. Most of them looked very old.

She picked one up. A wedding portrait, black and white, taken sometime in the 1930s, judging from the style of the bride’s dress. It was all satin, simply cut. A lace veil covered her dark hair and trailed over her shoulders, and a smile lit up her face, radiating happiness across the ages.

The groom looked just as happy. Hannah recognized the grin that tugged at something in her that she didn’t want to identify. His eyes lacked the sad, haunted quality she was so used to seeing there. Instead they looked happy, and full of adoration.

A door opened behind her, and Hannah turned to see Alek coming out of his kitchen, fully dressed in dark jeans and a blue button down, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up. He carried two mugs. Hannah set the picture down as he came over to her. “She was pretty.”

He looked at the picture, and the more familiar look of pain filled those inhumanly blue eyes. “Yes. She was.” He held out a mug to her. When she hesitated, he said, “It’s coffee. If I recall, you like it with milk and one sugar.”

She took the mug. “You noticed.”

He smiled, and some of the pain seemed to leave him. He sipped the contents of his own mug—Hannah didn’t want to think too much about what was in there—before asking, “Do you have a question for me today?”

At first she didn’t know what he meant; but then she remembered their bargain. She glanced back at the picture, and briefly considered asking about his wife, but that was obviously a painful subject. She nodded toward his mug instead. “Does it have to be human?”

A crease formed between his eyebrows as he frowned, but then comprehension seemed to dawn. He held up his mug, as if in a toast. “
This
is French roast,” he said. “But if you mean the blood, yes. I’m not sure why, but drinking animal blood is about as effective as not feeding at all. I know because I’ve tried living off of it.”

“What happens if you don’t feed?”

“We can go days without feeding, actually. I’ve gone as long as a week before. But the hunger gets worse with each passing day, and if we go too long, it becomes the only thing that drives us. We become feral, mindless, driven only to feed. When that happens we’re hardly any different from those poor bastards outside the gate.”

Hannah stared into her own coffee and contemplated his answer. “So I guess it’s kind of important that you guys stay fed.”

“You could say that. But there has to be a better way then enslaving humanity and forcing them to feed us.”

She took a slow, thoughtful sip. That’s what all of this was about, she realized. This camp, his research... it was all about finding a better way. She looked back at Alek’s picture on the bookshelf, and wondered what he must have been through to make him so different from all the others, so driven to help humanity when all Esme and her ilk wanted was to control them. She thought about asking, but it seemed too personal. Instead, she handed him back her mug. “I should get back downstairs. Thanks for the coffee.”