Zombie D.O.A. (18 page)
“You’ve been
treated well?” Dr. Brad
y asked.
“I need to see my daughter.”
“Of course
. I understand your concern and you have my word that Ruby is well.”
She looked past me to the soldier stationed at the door. “Corporal, would you remove the handcu
ffs from Mr. Collins,
” she said.
“Ma’am?
“I said…” she started irritably.
The marine snapped to attention
,” Yes, Colonel.” he barked.
After the handcuffs were removed, I massaged my wrists while Brady told the marine to leave us. She lit up a smoke, then as an afterthought stretched the cigarette case in my direction. I shook my head, no.
Brady took a pull on her cigarette, then placed it an
already overflowing
ashtray. She flipped open a file on her desk and said, “Your blood work looks pretty normal.” She sounded almost surprised.
She looked at me for a moment as though figur
ing how to phrase her next sentence
.
“Ruby’s
blood
though, is quite extraordinary.”
When I didn’t answer she said, “You don’t seem surprised.” My lack of response triggered that momentary irritation,
and
then she was all business again. “The child’s mother, where is she?”
“Dead.”
“You were married?”
“Yes”
“I’m sorry.”
No you’re not
, I wanted to say but kept my p
e
a
ce.
“The pregnancy was normal?
“Yes”
“And the birth? Your wife didn’t die in childbirth did she?”
I thought about that for a moment, then said simply, “No.”
“Chris, I know how difficult this must be.”
“Do you? How many of your family you lost in this…thing.” I said.
She looked at first hurt
,
then angry, “My family in Houston, I don’t know if…”
“So Joe was right.”
“What’s that?
”
“
Joe was right. It’s not just New York City.”
“I can’t discuss that, that’s classified.”
“Then if it
’
s all the same to you,” I said, starting to rise.
“Sit down!” She commanded, the colonel part of her outranking the doctor.
When she’d regained her composure she said, “I’m sorry, that was…
unprofessional of me.”
“I’d like to see Ruby now.”
“I’m sorry but
that’s not possible at this time.”
I glared at her and she flinched first. “Look Chris, I’m not sure if you appreciate the gravity of our situation
here. We’ve got a rampant virus
. You’ve seen
for yourself
what it can do, but
you don’t know the half of it. This thing mutates so fast, it
’s impossible
for us to get a handle on how to fight it.”
“I don’t understand what this has to with Ruby.”
She was quiet for a while, probably trying to decide if she could trust me with
the next piece
of
information. Eventually she decided that she could. “Ruby is the only case we’ve come across where to virus is stable.
She has it alright, but it’s stopped mutating.
”
And there it was, what I’d always known, what I’d always denied, what I’d always prayed wasn’t true. My daughter
was infected. I felt as though G
od had placed his foot on my throat and was pushing down on it with the entire weight of the world. I hung my head and felt tears well in my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Chris,” Brady said.
“What do you want from me?” I said, without looking up.
“What?”
“What do you want from me?” I repeated, looking at her, venom in my voice. “You’ve got my daughter, and surely you didn’t call me down here to ask my permission to turn her into your personal
pin cushion. S
o wh
at the fuck do you want from me?
”
I stood up and knocked the chair backwards. It flew across the room and crashed into the door. Brady was on her feet. The two marine guards entered the room, rifles at the ready.
“Get out!” Brady screamed.
Then to me she said, in a well-rehearsed medical professional voice, “Now, Chris, you need to calm down.”
“Like fuck I do,” I said. “You left us to die out there
. You set up camp down here by the lake, and put up your barricades and left the rest of us to die. How do you do that? How could you do that?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It’s…”
“…classified. Yeah, the get out of jail free card. Fuck the lot of you.” I turned to go.
“There is one other thing,” Brady said. “The reason we called you down here
,
actually. We were hoping to
find
your wife, but since she’s dead would you be able to tell us where we can locate her body.”
“Go fuck, yourself,” I said and walked out of the room.
Afterwards, I walked the camp with my two marine guards in close attendance. The base had been
set up in the north m
eadow, by the baseball and soccer fields.
North of the Recreation Centre a small tent town had sprung
up. The entire perimeter,
along
the
79
th
S
treet
Traverse
, along East and West Drives and just short of 86
th
Street
was surrounded by barbed wire. There were guard towers, and machine gun nests and foxholes.
Among the armored vehicles I saw there were a couple of tanks like the one Chavez had commandeered. I wondered if he was still alive, rolling around Manhattan like some voodoo warlord commanding his army of the dead.
On one of the field
s a kid
’
s game of soccer was in progress and I recognized on
e
of the watching moms.
“Valerie,” I called to her
and
she looking at me as though I was a ghost, and then her eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms around me. She
rained kisses on my face and sobbed and held me. “
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
” she said between sobs.
When she’d calmed down she said, “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Chris, and don’t be. There wasn’t exactly time for pleasantries back there.”
Valerie told me a bit about their few days in the camp. “We’ve been put through just about every medical test known to man,” she said. “But the good news is that we’ll be getting us out of here tomorrow. I don’t know where they’re taking us,” she said, “but anything is better than here.”
“Defense! Defense!” the woman next to her was shouting as she watched the game.
“You have n
o idea where they’re taking you?
” I asked
,
lowering my voice.
Valerie looked suspiciously at my two guards who were keepin
g a discreet distance. “You hear all kinds of rumors,”
she
said under her breath.
“Goal!” the woman next to her
shouted. “Way to go, honey!”
“So what’s the latest…rumor?
” I persisted.
“Well, Cheryl here,” she said, indicating the soccer mom who was now back to giving advice on defense, “Cheryl says she heard something about Virginia or Washington DC. Then again I wouldn’t put much faith in…”
“Defense!”
“…anything
she says.”
We stood for a while in silence and then I
said goodbye to Valerie and wished her and her boys well. It was heading towards a beautiful fall evening, with the blue of the sky deepening and the clouds taking on the appearance of spun gold. I remembered
a picnic Rosie and I had had on the paddock and how she’d convinced me to attend Shakespeare in the Park and had then been angry when I said it was boring.
There was to be a barbeque that evening
,
a send off of sorts for those that were being airlifted out the next day. I was happy for Valerie and the boys, but I declined to attend.
Instead I lay, handcuffed to my cot and took stock of the last six days of my life. Joe Thursday was gone, and I hoped that he had just been moved to another tent. Somehow I doubted it, and I realized how much I’d miss him. I’d known Joe all of three days and he was the closest thing I had to a friend in this world.
Outside I could hear music and laughter as though everything was right with the world. Th
e distant sounds of gunfire
served as a warning to anyone foolish enough to believe that it was.
M
ost of all I thought of Ruby and I hoped and prayed that my little girl would be okay. I didn’t know if I would ever see her ag
ain. I didn’t know where they planned to take her or what they planned to do with her.
L
y
ing
there in the dark with a million thoughts inside my head
I made a promise to myself and to Ruby
. That I would find her, whatever it took and whatever the cost, I’d find her.
Sometime during the night a firefight broke out. I
was wakened by the
sound of rifle fire and the shouts of the marines. Then there were whistling noises and explosions, which I
k
new from the few war movies I’d seen to be mortars. There was heavy machine gun fire and I heard one on the tanks s
tarting up, its jet engine roar
reminding me again
of Bronson Chavez.