Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (25 page)

She told a lie.

A photo of her mother in her kitchen appeared on the page below
her. Images danced in her head of numerous family gatherings where
her mom would be in the kitchen and she and her sister were there to
help her. It was a piece of her life she cherished deeply. Liam's
relationship with his parents had been complicated the last months
before the zombies, but hers had been idyllic. In retrospect, it was
like the calm before the storm. So many good memories in that
kitchen…

It was where she sat her mom down and told her fib. She wasn't
brave enough to lie to her dad, so she begged her mom to relay the
story to him.

“Mom, D and I have stopped courting. It's not his fault! I
like another boy.”

She played it over in her head, and was struck how immature she
sounded. But she was a different person those few months ago. The
kind of person who mistook heartbreak and embarrassment as it related
to a violent crime. Back then she had no idea, at all, how to clearly
explain what had happened.

It stung her to admit it, even though she was absolutely certain
she hadn't dishonored her mother and father with the tall tale. Two
wrongs sometimes make a right. It would have served no one to reveal
to them that she'd been ra—

The tears returned.

She knew all the lies she'd used on herself.

We were practically married, so maybe it wasn't really...

I didn't do enough to fight him off, so maybe it was my...

My parents will hate me and think I'm damaged if I tell them…

“Oh Vicky,
I want you
—blah, blah, blah. Lie,
lie, lie,” she voiced with scorn.

She looked at one of the empty white blotches in the book. A
missing image of a monster.

She threw the album against the wall over Casey's bed as she
screamed, “I didn't want YOU!”

And then, quieter, “Dammit.”

2

An hour later she felt much better. Her soul still carried some
rough edges, but she no longer had any misgivings about her own
spiritual well-being. She'd asked for forgiveness—though none
was needed—for deceiving her parents and prayed for his soul.

He's gonna need it.

Exercise always made her feel better. She took off her loaner
sneakers and found her good pair of running shoes. Like the smell of
her sheets, the shoes carried a lot of Colorado miles on them. A
reminder of her past—good and bad. Mostly good.

She went outside for a short jog. She wasn't dressed for it, and
her legs were sore from the run in the floodway, but she needed to
feel the rhythm of the road beneath her own shoes. It felt heavenly
to coast through the stately university grounds, but the heat forced
her back to a walk after only a short time.

There were lots of young people moving about from place to place.
A few seemed to enjoy the day as they sat on park benches or up
against trees while they read. The apocalypse suddenly seemed far
away.

As she alternately jogged and walked the campus, she figured she
might find the people doing medical research. That's why she stayed
behind, and it seemed natural to take the bull by the horns. Running
gave her the confidence to poke around. It took her several entries
into abandoned buildings, but she arrived at the place she figured
she'd have the best chance of finding Dr. Yu. The Whitaker Hall of
Biomedical Engineering loomed over her.

“If she's not in there, I'll eat my hat,” she said
softly.

Inside was twice as busy as she imagined. The halls swarmed with
the youth of college students and older people who had to be
researchers and faculty. A desk near the front door was crammed with
ten people, mostly students. Only one looked up at her as she
approached.

“Testing or reporting?”

When Victoria didn't answer right away, the young woman stood up
to get a better look at her. Victoria was overwhelmed by all the
activity.

“What's all the—”

“You either have to go to testing or report any effects
you've had, down that way.” She pointed down a long hallway.

“I'm looking for Doctor Yu.”

“All the docs are in testing, that way, and up.” She
pointed to a wide staircase off to one side of the reception area.
When Victoria still didn't appear to get it, she huffed a little,
then sat down as if she was totally put out.

Victoria knew the type. She didn't want to further interact with
the greeter, so she started up the steps. Nearby, more steps went
down below the main floor. That flight had even more people running
up and down.

As she hovered, a voice spoke out. “That goes to the
tunnels. That's how people get around, ya know?”

Victoria stood there while she was passed by a great number of
students. The girl that stayed by her side was shorter than she was,
but older. Her blonde hair was wrapped in a tight bun. It seemed to
be the style as she looked around.

Easy to keep clean.

“I'm sorry. This is just all a little overwhelming. I
haven't seen this many young people in one place since...”

The end of that sentence involved blood and zombie pursuit. She'd
seen all those young people in the nightclub where she danced across
the ribbon of time between the Old World and the New.

“Yeah, I've not seen anyone new come in for a few days. You
stand out because you have the thousand yard stare. Everyone comes in
with it, though most lose it when they see what we're doing here.”

Despite the commotion around them, the girl hung out her hand.
“I'm Lilly.”

Victoria looked at it, and wondered if she saw it correctly. “I
thought shaking hands would have been a dead art by now.” She
laughed to show she wasn't being hostile.

“No, we still do it here.”

Victoria took it.

“I'm Victoria. Nice to meet you.”

“Testing is upstairs.”

“So I've been told.”

With a smile, Lilly brushed her arm and asked her to follow.
Victoria stayed with her, but pulled on her long-sleeve shirt. She
hadn't brought it for warmth exactly, but it did stave off the chill.
Medical buildings were always cool. This one seemed downright cold,
but she attributed that to not feeling proper air conditioning in
weeks.

When they got to the second level, Lilly pointed to the stairs to
the third. “There's more testing up there, but you want to be
on this floor where things are a little more lively.”

Victoria saw only a few people going up and down the stairs
leading to the uppermost floor.

“You came at the right time. We have several openings in the
program. You can have one of mine. I've have to study two at a time
for the past three shifts because we have so many.”

Victoria played along, nodding and grunting in the affirmative
when necessary. She believed she could figure this out once she had a
better sense of what kind of research was being done. The confidence
she tried to project was the opposite of how she felt.

Lilly took her down a long hallway, then turned abruptly into a
room to their right. She had to push open a heavy door and hold it
for Victoria.

There were no lights on in the room, and the sun was on the
opposite side of the building, so there was a false darkness when she
walked in. Her eyes adjusted in moments, and when she saw the layout,
she knew exactly what she'd walked into.

Bed after bed lined the walls and made neat rows down the middle
of the long room. Like a middle-school classroom with beds instead of
desks. Each bed had a person lying there, and most had another
sitting beside them. She estimated about forty total, in four long
lines.

Victoria looked around for a person she figured had to be in the
room.

Not over there.

Not there.

There!

Near the other end, the security man walked between the rows with
an even face and dull green hospital scrubs. He could have been a
doctor of medicine except that he wore a big back belt around his
midsection and even from a distance she could see the big pistol
perched there, next to several long and thin tools she took as
spikes, or stakes. The gear of a killer of zombies...

“Here you go. You can take this one,” Lilly said
pleasantly.

It was a man she recognized. He was one of the scouts Liam rescued
when he ran across the pedestrian bridge the other day.

“Hello again,” he said.

3

Victoria sat next to him. His hands and arms were restrained.

“Hello yourself. I didn't know you got bitten.”

“Sorta. In the tunnels. We got lost. I dropped behind and
nearly fell apart under the weight of one of them things...but Jason
came and got me. He was about five seconds too late to make a
difference.” Though it was clumsy, he pointed his head down
toward his right arm. “Got me on the hand with a nasty scratch.
When I arrived in the park, they separated me and a few others and
walked us over here. They said they were going to give us medical
attention, but when I woke up...well, here I was.”

“They tricked you?”

“Tricked? Yeah, I guess it was kind of a trick. But what
else could they do? I was a threat, even though I didn't get bitten.
They aren't taking any chances.”

“And you're OK with this?” Victoria felt her sense of
right and wrong being trampled, mostly because of the restraints.

“I'm too tired to care, to be honest. You and your friend
pulled us off that bridge and you ran every ounce of care out of me
on the way here. Really, that was the bravest thing I ever seen.”

“Well, Liam believes in what you guys are doing. You created
a baby Polar Bear.” As she said it, she looked around the room
at all the young people watching over the injured. Did they have any
idea what was happening beyond the safety of their campus?

Did we ever?

“Yeah, well Jason and that woman really know their stuff.
Keep everyone on task. Said we were coming down here for an important
mission and all that. Like I said, I was tired. Even before we ran
here, we were out of food. Out of time.” He looked up at the
ceiling tiles.

“I'm Victoria, by the way.”

“Neil. I'd shake your hand, but...” He chuckled
softly.

She put her hand on his good hand, defying his pessimism. He
turned with a tired smile. “Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a long time, as there wasn't much to talk
about in the crowded room. Most of the other young people had
electronic devices with them, so they could stay busy while doing
their monitoring. Victoria had no such luxury.

After an hour or so, some kids rolled in a cart with some bottled
waters and a pile of energy bars.

“Lunch time!” the cart pusher yelled.

That got things moving. Victoria watched the procedure and figured
out the attendants got food for themselves and their patient. Since
they couldn't use their hands, she'd have to put the bar in Neil's
mouth so he could chew it. It was all familiar to her, since she
spent a frantic few weeks in the hospitals before the crisis in the
United States spun out of control. This clean building was a far cry
from a hospital ward full of sick people beaten down with Extra-Ebola
or Influenza.

After getting Neil squared away, she ate her own bar and sucked
down the water. She discarded “eating like a lady” a long
time ago.

By chance, she saw Doctor Yu walk by the door.

“Don't go away, huh?” she said with pep as she sprang
up to catch her.

“Doctor Yu!”

The doctor was near the stairwell, though it wasn't clear if she
was going to go up or down. She turned around as Victoria caught up
with her.

“Hi, doctor.”

“What are you doing here? Did you come to get that man's
blood back? Because that isn't—”

“Oh, no. Not at all. No, I'm here to ask you if I can help,
though I've already fallen in back there. Sitting with the sick.”

The doctor looked behind Victoria. “Sitting? You are part of
that
?”

By tone alone Victoria realized she was confused.

“Is that OK? Isn't this what you're doing?”

“No, not my team. I was coming from upstairs to get some
supplies. This floor is another project. More of...hedge...against a
larger outbreak.”

“You bring in the sick to make sure they aren't infected,
right?”

“Yeah, something like that. Listen, this isn't a good place
to talk. Will you join me at the medical tent out in the park this
evening? We can talk more then.”

“Sure.” It pleased her greatly to be making plans to
do things more in advance than the next zombie attack. “See ya
then.”

She sat back down next to Neil, but he was asleep. She didn't even
have a book to read.

I wonder what Liam's book is going to say about the Zombie
Apocalypse up to this point? Am I living at the start of a book now,
or at the end, as things return to normal?

She wrestled the idea as she sat and stared at the floor
throughout the afternoon. The only relief came at dinnertime, when
the small cart came back in with more water and energy bars. This
time she was given two.

“Almost enough calories for a quarter of the day,” she
said to Neil. Everyone downed their bars, though several youngsters
around her claimed they were going to try to make them last. They
did, for ten or fifteen minutes. Hunger came before lofty notions of
“spreading it out.”

Soon she was done with her second bar, too.

4

Once again she followed the lead of the other students in the
room. Everyone stood up at around six o' clock, said their goodbyes,
then made for the door.

Though she was the one moving, Victoria tried to employ her
bedside manners for the man in her care. “Will you be back
tomorrow for more fun?”

“I don't think I'll be going nowhere,” he said without
much enthusiasm. Wires and tubes poked out from underneath a blanket
covering his bottom half and she wondered if he could get up at all.
If the patients didn't get up at some point they ran the risk of
developing worse problems, including bed sores. But there didn't
appear to be anyone in charge.