War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (8 page)

The city brought out the best and the worst in people. They laughed over nothing and screeched in anger over less. They were suspicious of strangers but the love they showed their friends came off them in waves. New Yorkers were so different from him that he felt like an alien being and yet, at the same time, he could see there were many people just like him: people alone and in pain, on the outside of life looking in.

The next day he woke up in a Jersey City motel room with his lungs full of crap, and pain that radiated from his chest and up into his shoulder. “Well, shit,” he whispered and then spat out a knob of ugly phlegm. He dry swallowed six Advil and when that didn’t do anything he took six more. It barely helped.

“And that’s why,” he said, thinking about his upcoming suicide. Chuck had plenty of life left in him, but nothing to look forward to. He could expect every morning from here on in to be just as bad if not worse.

“A gun’ll be messy. I don’t wanna leave a mess for some poor shlub. That would be straight-up rude. And I don’t like heights…” It was one thing to enjoy the view from the top of one of them skyscrapers, it was another thing altogether to intentionally take a step off of one into nothing. Using a car to gas himself to death seemed as fine a way to go as any, but seeing as he didn’t have a car or a garage, that choice was out.

Chuck settled on pills as his one-way ticket to heaven or hell or whatever it was waiting for him. “And not some crappy Advils.” He wanted to go out in style, maybe even with a smile on his face.

At ten that morning he stood in the High Point Oncology Wellness Center, reflecting on the dichotomy between the bright and shiny offices and the grey and listless patients waiting to be told what they already knew: that their remission had been canceled, their funeral date had been moved up, and that their chemo-fueled agony had been a waste of time.

“I don’t have an appointment ma’am,” he said to the brassy woman behind the desk. He tried not to stare, but east coast women were so strikingly over-worked in the looks department that he couldn’t help wonder where the makeup ended and the girl beneath it all began. “I just need some pills. Ma-doc is Jeffery Montgomery outta Norman, Oklahoma. He’ll vouch for me.”

“We don’t work that way,” the receptionist said with a fake smile. Chuck figured that she never wore a real one. Her lips sported two different shades of gloss or liner or what all. They also seemed unnaturally puffy as if she was smiling up at him from around a mouthful of ass fat or silicone.

A few minutes later, Chuck found himself lying his way through a stack of paperwork. Phone number: first ten digits that sprang to mind. Address: 1428 Elm St, the original house in the movie
A Nightmare on Elm Street
. Mother’s maiden name: Chiapet. Secondary Diagnosis: EPS—Enormous Penis Syndrome.

It was absolutely juvenile but he didn’t care, he needed the laugh. All around him in the waiting room were people waiting to die and whenever he glanced at them he wondered if they would end up in the ground or if they would find themselves in something resembling a brass spittoon on someone’s mantle.

When he was done bullshitting his way through the paperwork, Chuck stretched out his long legs, shut down his green eyes and tried to nap, but found that he couldn’t because there was a cougher in the room. She would cough which would give him the urge to shoot one right back. What was worse she had that same loose-phlegm hack that he did. They traded cough for cough until he opened his eyes and saw the source: a very pretty girl—or rather she would’ve been pretty if she weren’t in the process of dying.

She was tall and pale. Her skin was like white marble; it made the blue of her eyes stand out. On her head was a little acorn cap of soft wool that was girlishly pink. A very short tuft of pale blond hair stuck out beneath. They locked eyes and each fought off the urge to cough. It became a contest—again, so juvenile that Chuck marveled at himself.

The girl went pink in the cheeks, started blinking rapidly and then coughed. Chuck grinned and coughed into the back of his hand. “Squamous or small cell?” he asked.

“Small cell,” she admitted. He nodded to suggest that he had the same diagnosis. She glanced at the mass of brown hair on his head. “Still have your hair, does that mean you got lucky and they caught it early?”

“Nope. I’m into late innings and I figgered why go through all that crap? Ma-name’s Chuck, nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand. They shook and he was slow to give up the grip. Her hand was as satiny soft as his was rough and leathery.

She didn’t seem to mind. “I’m Stephanie. And you didn’t miss anything. Chemo is as bad as they make it out to be. It’s why I’ve drawn the line.”

Their handshaking had reached an awkward point and reluctantly he pulled his hand back. “You throwin’ in the towel?”

“I like the way you talk,” she remarked instead of answering the question. “Are you from Texas?”

Chuck’s eyes blazed in mock fury. “Texas? Do I look like a big hunk of bull crap to you? Next I reckon you’ll be asking me iffin ma-family is from France.”

“Is it?” She laughed and then coughed. He did the same.

“Naw. I’m from Oklahoma. I’m out here seein’ what all there is to see before I get settled in for ma-long dirt nap.”

“I should have done that,” Steph said, “instead of that awful chemo. Of course my mom wouldn’t have let me either way. Here I am a grown woman and she treats me like…well she treats me like her baby daughter. I know I’m lucky to have her around except she doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit. Right now she’s in there with Doctor Wilson conspiring to send me away to a top secret facility where they have some sort of experiments planned.”

“Experiments?” Chuck snorted. “Sounds like they got some newbie doctors who need practice with an anal probe. No thanks. They’ll just have to wait until I’ve reached cadaver status.”

“It’s worse than that,” Stephanie said. She lowered her voice to a whisper and added: “They want to inject a fungus into you. Is that crazy or what?” When he started to laugh, she put her hand on his arm and said, “I’m not kidding…oh shit, my mom.”

Winnie Glowitz, looking small next to the tall doctor, stood in the waiting room doorway staring at Chuck with a great deal of suspicion. Dr. Wilson had a different look. “Could you wait out here for a few minutes, Mrs. Glowitz? I need to talk to this gentleman briefly. Charles Singleton?”

“You’re in trouble with the principal,” Steph whispered to him as he got up. Chuck flashed her a smile and followed after the doctor.

“I could’ve waited a few more minutes,” Chuck said as they entered an exam room. “Twern’t no need to call on me so quick like.”

“You thought that was quick?” Dr. Wilson asked. “You were in that room for over an hour.”

Chuck shrugged. “Some hours are better than others, I guess.”

“With the right company, I would say you’re correct. Now, my nurse tells me you’re here for pills. Sorry, but we don’t work that way. We follow protocols that are designed to…”

“I don’t means to be rude, Doc, but I don’t need protocols or chemo or any of that hogwash. I have some pain I need to deal with so, iffin you’ll just write me a script, I’ll be on ma-way.”

“On your way, where?” Chuck shrugged in answer and Dr. Wilson saw right through it. “That’s what I thought. I’ve been in the cancer business for over twenty years and I know when a man is done. You guys get that devil-may-care look in your eyes, and I’m alright with that. Who am I to say when life is no longer worth living? But, what about that young woman out in the waiting room?”

“Stephanie? What about her?”

“She’s not ready yet,” Dr. Wilson answered. “I see it. She may talk a good game but she’s not ready to die just yet. She wants to try to live and I want you to help her.”

Chuck gave a little laugh that turned into one of his longer coughing fits. Red in the face and gasping, he asked, “Help her, how? That fungus business? Are you serious? Look, I don’t even know her.”

“Yet, you two have a connection,” Dr. Wilson said, entwining his long, dark fingers together. “It was obvious to me and it was most certainly obvious to her mom. You both are end-stage cancer patients. You both are looking death right in the mouth. And you’re both young and pretty. You’ll never meet a girl in a bar with connections that deep.”

This brought out a laugh from Chuck. “I’m not that young." His smile dipped at the corners. He was all sorts of ready to die, but he knew the same couldn't be said for Stephanie. There was too much hope left in her. "So…is it this fungus business? Iffin so it sounds crazy.”

“I’ll make you a deal, Mr. Singleton. Let me explain the clinical trial to you and, if you still want to walk away from this chance, I’ll get you your pills and you can go.”

Twenty minutes later Wilson finished and Chuck left with his pills. He paused in the waiting room doorway. “Stephanie? You wanna come take a step around the block with me? I have a question for you.”

The pistol, a snub-nosed .38 with a worn handle, sat under his socks in the top dresser drawer. John Burke had checked in on it once an hour for the last two days as if it were a cat ready to drop a litter under the stairs. He sighed with each visit. He sighed and he coughed.

But the gun would have to wait for just a little while longer. “Pretty soon, Amy.”

Would she understand? Would Jesus? This was a big concern with John. Suicide was one of those things that didn’t sit in a grey area. There wasn’t going to be no asterisk next to his name when he was standing at the pearly gates waiting to be let in.
I got me some fuck-all extenuating circumstances there, Mr. Saint Pete.
That wasn’t going to fly.

John shut the drawer. The time wasn’t right. He was still waiting on answers from people who, it seemed, were hell bent on ignoring him. That he wasn’t hearing from friends who’d stop returning his calls months before, wasn’t surprising, but to be treated like a dog by family, well that just stung.

Downstairs, the kitchen door creaked open.

“Jaimee?” he called, suddenly nervous. Although Jaimee was a tiny thing, she was never this quiet, unless…

“Yessum, Daidy. It’s me.”

“Somethin' wrong?” he asked hurrying down to the kitchen. There most certainly was something wrong. Jaimee was white and there were tears on her face.

“Aunt Kathy came to see me at school,” the little girl said. “They took me outta class.”

It felt like a stone had done sunk deep down in his belly, but he tried to play it cool. “Oh yeah?”

“Aunt Kathy told me to tell you that I cain’t come and live with her and that you have to stop callin’ at all hours. Why am I supposed to go live with her? Is it your cough? Are you gonna be like mommy?”

The weight in his gut doubled. “Maybe,” he said, chickening out. The manly thing would’ve been to sit her down and have a chat. Just then he felt no better than a dog.

“When do you go to the hospital?” she asked. Since she could crawl, her life had been one hospital visit after another. The weight in his gut grew. It was such a load that he sat himself at the kitchen table; it’s one bad leg wobbling some as it had for years.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” he told her. The room went very quiet

“Then how will you get better?”

He stumbled over the truth and tripped on lies, and all that came out of his mouth was a series of nonsense sounds. “I…I…uh…hey, is that the mail?” She had a little stack of envelopes in her hand; fuck-all bills and crap he figured, however the first one was addressed to Amy Lynn Burke. Normally, he would’ve chucked it without bothering to look inside, but just then he needed an excuse to not say what needed to be said.

“Who’s it from?” Jaimee asked. She had latched onto the letter as well. It was like a life preserver from reality.

“Oh, just some pharmacy. Prolly it’s a bill or a…” His mouth stopped as his eyes latched onto the sum $10,000. It sat midway down the paragraph. Was that how much Amy Lynn owed? No…he had to start over again, reading from the top to understand that it was how much they were offering.

“Who are these people?” John asked, looking at the front of the envelope. “R & K Pharmaceutical Research. Huh?”

When it came to the labs, Dr. Lee could not have been happier. They were, at least from a scientist’s perspective, beautiful. They were very bright, impeccably clean, and fantastically spacious—it was every scientist’s nightmare to have to stumble over each other in order to get work done. She had the opposite problem, if problem was even the word for it. Each of her three teams buzzed and scuttled about in their own BSL-3 labs, preparing for the first trial, which was less than twenty-four hours away.

She watched through the glass windows, thoroughly satisfied as the final touches were being put to the Com-cells. She was so happy she had even been able to give Ryan Deckard a smile when he came scowling into the hospital just after nine that morning. Though to be sure, she kept it on the cool side. Whenever she gave him a warmer smile he returned it in the same manner and there would be a spark or something odd between them. Since she had no intention of getting involved with a co-worker, especially one who didn’t even possess a master’s degree, she kept her interactions on the lean edge of professional.

Deck wasn’t happy. Not because of the cool attitude Dr. Lee was giving him, she was that way with everyone. No, he wasn’t happy about the leak. His informant Jean Basteau had been open about where he’d come by his information: a professor of microbiology at Cornell named Ethan Rousseau who did frequent consultant work for Rhonofis, a French competitor of R&K’s. The fat bastard had let it slip after three too many vodka tonics.

As expected, Ethan was not as forthcoming as Jean had been. In fact Ethan was a dick in Deckard’s opinion. So far, substantial bribes and threats of lawsuits had done nothing to change his mind about talking, and no amount of digging seemed to unearth anything concerning who the leaker was or how far Rhonofis was on their own version of the Com-cell. Deck had run up against a stone wall.

But that wasn’t his greatest problem. Most of his surveillance system was not yet operational and no amount of screaming at Hal Kingman would make it so by the following day when the trial would commence. For some reason Kingman had prioritized the perimeter cameras. Deck could see every inch of the grounds which was all well and good except the biggest threat to the cure was what was going on
inside
the facility.

Not only did he have a double agent to worry about, but there was also a sudden influx of people in the Walton Facility. He had the numbers memorized: forty-two patients, sixty-one family members, eight nurses, six doctors of various specialties, twenty-three members of the cleaning staff, fourteen cafeteria workers, thirty-one management and administrative positions. Counting the eighteen scientists, Deck’s twelve-man security crew, and the construction workers, who still had so much to do, there were now two hundred and fifty-seven people crawling like ants all over the grounds.

To make matters worse, three of the patients were convicted criminals. In order to fill out the study to a respectable number, the recruiter had even scraped the nearby prisons. The prisoners had been secreted in by way of the loading dock and were now housed in the southwest corner room of the second floor. That particular room had been picked not because it was in any way more secure than the others, but simply because it had the worst view: the side of the parking garage behind the main building.

Deck checked on the prisoners personally. He entered without knocking and stood just inside the door. The room was crowded. A third bed had been crammed in with the original two and with it had come three portable monitors and an IV stand. There was barely room to walk between the beds.

The three prisoners perked up when he first entered. "Thought you'd be the hot nurse again," Von Braun said, speaking genially. After seeing the view: a grey concrete wall, he had chosen the bed closest to the door, reasoning he was not only closer to freedom but also closer to the
honeys
he hoped would be waiting on him hand and foot.

Deckard ignored the man. He went to the window, not to check out the view, but rather to inspect the glass and the rubber seal along its edges. With both palms he pressed hard against the window, leaving two ghostly prints behind.

Von Braun laughed at him. "You think we want to escape? You ain’t too bright. Not only is this place practically a vacation, if we run away we don't get the fucking cure, moron."

Turning from the window, Deck stared at the hulking, blonde prisoner, assessing him, seeing the cold, cold eyes and noting the lack of emotion behind them.

"Check the glass once an hour," Deck said to the security guard who had followed him in. Strictly for the week long trial, Deck had hired three extra guards to oversee the prisoners. Each had been chosen for their large size and the easy way violence came naturally to them; the position didn't call for more than that.

"We're chained to the fucking beds," Von Braun said, lifting his arm halfway up and letting his shackles rattle.

"And check the chains as well," Deck ordered. "And I want to know if there's a single screw loose on any of these beds."

"What a dumb fuck," Von Braun muttered. He'd been sitting on the edge of the bed, now he laid back and nuzzled his head into the soft pillow. "Do what you need to do, just leave the remote and tell that hot young nurse I'm ready for my sponge bath anytime."

The other two prisoners were on the downhill side of middle age--one was grey in the face from his disease and lethargic from the meds. He was so far gone that although he was only fifty-eight, Deck had him pegged in his mid-seventies. The other prisoner had a great deal of body hair, but only a few wisps on his round head. He was chubby and sweated easily even in the thin hospital gown he wore. At the mention of sponge baths he sat up straighter. "They do that?" he asked. "I could get a bath from one of them?"

Deck's lip curled as an image formed in his mind. "Male orderlies only," he added to the security guard.

"That's bullshit!" the hairy prisoner cried. "I'm not a pervert. I got locked up for fraud, not for rape. And I got rights! You can count on a lawsuit if you plan on treating me..."

Dr. Lee stepped into the room; her beauty stopping the conversation cold. She did not advance beyond the doorway as every eye turned her way. "Did someone mention a lawsuit already? We haven't even begun the trial."

"Don't worry about it," Deckard told her. "Just some whining from the prisoners. That sort of talk never amounts to anything."

The hairy prisoner had already forgotten his threat. His mind and his eyes were completely focused on Thuy. "Whoa," he said as though in awe.

"Yeah," Von Braun agreed with his fellow inmate. "I don't normally go in for the squints but I'll make an exception for you, Doc. How about you draw the curtain around this bed and give me a full checkup. I have some swelling you might be able to help with."

Though Deck bristled, Thuy took the remark in stride--it wasn't the first time a man had made a jackass of himself in her presence. "You are nothing but a lab rat to me, Mr. Von Braun. When you've served my purpose you'll go back to your cage where you belong. Until then, be a good little rat and shut the hell up."

"You are a saucy little bitch," the prisoner replied, smiling, enjoying the attention. It had been eight years since he had even a conversation with a woman, and just then he had a fully engorged hard on.

"Yes," Thuy said, drawing out the word, somehow suggesting that Von Braun was inadequate by the simple syllable. "In case you are unaware of it, Mr. Von Braun, your fate is in my hands. If I want you off the study then you are out of here, and I don't need a judge or a lawyer or a court order, either. I simply put a line through your name and you'll be back in your cell by dinner."

"That would be a death sentence," Von Braun replied. "Are you so devoid of emotion that you'd be able to do that? Kill me with the stroke of your pen?"

Thuy didn't hesitate. "Yes. So, would you like to behave or go back to your cell?"

The pair locked eyes in a battle of wills only to be interrupted by the hairy prisoner in the next bed. "I'll be good. Herman, too. Don't lump us in with him."

She turned her cold glare on him; he blanched and touched the neck of his hospital gown with one of his hairy-knuckled hands in a gesture that was strangely dainty.

"I'll be good as well," Von Braun said. "You can trust me." He winked at her. As she started to shake her head, her phone began to ring.

"What?" she asked, brushing past Deckard and heading for the door. "What emergency do you have for me now?" she demanded into the phone just as the door swung shut.

"Did you see that body?" Von Braun asked the other prisoners. "Holy shit that was nice."

Deck gritted his teeth and turned to the guard. "Watch them. Anything happens, it'll be your ass on the line."

The construction workers were going at it non-stop, hammering and drilling everything in sight. The nurses were like worker bees going from room to room, drawing blood, hooking up patients to monitors, and filling out charge notes. The scientists were sweating over the outcome of the trial before it even began and each was checking and rechecking the Com-cells or rereading their notes, or running computer simulations for the umpteenth time.

Strangely, the Chinese agent might have been the most relaxed person in the partially built hospital. With the hard part of his mission behind him he sat at his desk, playing solitaire on his computer and bowing his head like an idiot each time Dr. Lee rushed past. She was being run ragged, responding to every pseudo emergency that came up; there seemed to be no end to them and she was no longer the cool, professional scientist who had so confidently entered the hospital at dawn six hours before.

Secretly, Eng laughed at her and couldn't wait to see what she would look like the next day when her precious cure turned deadly; at least he assumed it would be deadly. When Riggs' possums had been given the
Alkaloid
Com-cells they had gone
diān
, crazy, biting through the wire of their cages to get at their brothers and sisters in the control group. Those that got through turned cannibal, gorging themselves until their bellies were swollen and the tips of their whiskers dripped blood.

It had been quite disgusting and yet Eng wanted an even more horrible display and so, when he sabotaged the trial by switching out the weak
Fusarium
mycotoxin with Riggs’
Alkaloid
version, he tripled the dose. It had not been easy.

With Riggs' team in charge of transferring the mycotoxin-bearing organelles into the stem cells, Eng was perfectly positioned to switch out the weaker
Fusarium
for Riggs's far stronger
Ergot Alkaloids
. It should have been simple, especially since Riggs barely paid attention to thing one in his own lab and spent as much time as he could next door in Milner's lab chatting up Anna Holloway.

When he wasn't around, Dr. Lee was always right there, asking questions and demanding answers about everything from the incubator temperatures to the pipette sterilization procedures. She wished to oversee every single aspect of the cure and was amazingly, annoyingly meticulous and had nearly caught Eng on two separate occasions in the middle of sabotaging her project. The first time he had crawled into a cabinet to escape detection and the second he had only saved himself by playing up his bumbling Chinaman stereotype to explain away why he was walking around with a tray full of
Alkaloids
.

Eventually Eng had to spend the night in the lab, working in the dark and dodging the guards to complete his sabotage.

On the other side of the double-edged sword was Eng's station chief who was not happy with Eng's latest reports. To be the real hero in the war against cancer, Eng had to keep
everyone
from making the breakthrough and that included his own scientists back home. In China it was almost a point of pride to steal someone else's work for your own, something Eng was certain had been occurring since he was first placed on Riggs' team. It's why his last few reports had detailed the "poor" performance of the
Fusarium mycotoxin,
while at the same time he had hinted strongly that
Alkaloids
were the way to go.

That people would probably die, didn't concern Eng in the least. People died all the time in China. Life there was hard and short and quickly forgotten when it was gone. The state saw to that. China was a land where families are destroyed on a whim, a place where love was secondary to need, and a nation where personal honor rarely reaches maturity. It's a country where backstabbing and climbing over the warm corpses of your recent colleagues is a proven method of advancement.

Next door, in Japan, billion dollar deals could be concluded on a handshake, but Eng knew that in China a thousand page contract was simply an excuse to find loopholes. This sort of thinking breeds a form of selfish individuality that would be toxic in any other country--in China it was a way of life.

"You'll need to find a sitter," the admissions nurse said with a lift of one shoulder. After personally overseeing forty-one patients, she was too tired to do more.