Green Fields (Book 3): Escalation (23 page)

I didn’t bother with shedding anything but the hoodie—it would have needlessly bulked me up—and let Martinez help me into the oversized scrub pants that I pulled on right over my boots and pants. To stave off the bout of paranoia I pulled on a second set of latex gloves over the first, making sure they sat as snug on my fingers as possible. With a wry smile I realized that it stemmed less from trepidation of getting infected, but plain old biosafety protocols. It was funny how ingrained things could pop up just like that.

“If you tell me that you’re actually looking forward to this, you lose any moral high ground that you always claim when you rail at his decisions,” Martinez grumbled. Of course he was referring to Nate. And of course he was right.

“No, absolutely not looking forward to this,” I replied, feeling my throat close up. “But I didn’t expect this to feel so fucking familiar.”

That drew a quick grin from our medic, and he held the swing door into the OR for me. “After you.”

“Don’t they say beauty before age?” I teased as I walked by him, knotting up the face mask at the back of my head.

Martinez’s answering smile was hidden by his own mask, but his eyes translated the message well enough. “Bitch.”

“Always,” I acknowledged—and lost all sense for joking as my eyes fell on the gorefest in front of us.
 

The three had cleaned themselves up somewhat, and there was a bucket of fresh water next to the steel table, with a sponge inside of it. Brownish-black stains on the floor showed where someone had tried—but not very hard—to make it a little less slippery. Calling the effort “cleaning” would have been too much. The moment my eyes snagged to the zombie, it was impossible to look away again. The sight of it—now missing the other three limbs, too, making it just a torso with a head attached—was just too morbid to look away. And maybe it was just me, but it was kind of a well-endowed specimen. I didn’t want to guess at why they’d left that attached—then again, it was probably a fundamentally male thing. I couldn’t fathom that the Ice Queen would have any qualms cutting anyone’s dick off.

“So what exactly is it that you want me to do?” I asked the room at large, crossing my arms over my chest, if very gingerly.

Nate cleared his throat, and it took me a moment to tear my gaze away and regard him. The hint of a smirk was lurking on his face, and I already knew what was coming when he opened his mouth to deliver it. “Stop staring at zombie dicks is a good first step.”

“My, someone’s jealous today,” I remarked—and couldn’t refrain from glancing back to the parts in question.

“Not sure how it should reflect negatively on me that you’re transfixed by dead meat,” he griped.

“Well, it stands to reason that yours is what I’m comparing it to, right?” Blinking innocently, I allowed myself a smile, but it probably looked like the grimace it was. “But all joking aside, did that thing move while you took it apart? Medical curiosity, not sexual.”

Nate snorted. “That you feel the need to clarify that is telling.”

“Of your jackassness, yes,” I affirmed. “So, did he get a hard-on when you sawed off his arms and legs? Or afterward?”

“It’s obvious that the virus has fried their brains, but I doubt that it’s that bad that they get off on dismemberment,” he shot back.

“Bree has a point there,” Martinez interjected, his voice neutral but I could tell that he was fighting a smile.

“You would say that,” Andrej joked.

It was Pia who replied, though. “She does. Death erections aren’t uncommon in deaths by strangulation.”

“That’s why autoerotic asphyxiation is a thing,” Martinez added under his breath.

Nate looked from Pia to Martinez, still shaking his head. “You’re all such a fountain of wisdom. How neither of you hasn’t already found a cure for zombies is beyond me.”

“Just stating facts,” Pia shot back, clearly unperturbed. “And no, it didn’t have an erection, at any point. I haven’t seen any of them give any indication so far that they can still be sexually active, even on a basal reflex level.”

“Thank fuck for small mercies,” I said, likely echoing everyone’s sentiment—and continued staring at that flaccid piece of meat.

“Want me to cut if off so you can rest easy at night?” Pia asked, the humor lacing her words making her accent more pronounced. Looking up, I frowned, but then realized that she was grinning at Nate rather than me.

“Don’t bother with that. I think I’m a little more secure than that.”

“Love how you use the term ‘little’ when referring to your sex organs,” I replied, giving him wide eyes when he glared at me.

“Can we cut the crap now and get down to business?” he asked, not bothering with hiding his annoyance. “We didn’t really find anything new or useful so far. This is likely an exercise in futility, but as we already have that blasted thing here, why not cut it open and see how they look inside? You know how to do a Y incision?”

I shrugged. “Does it matter if I botch it? He’s not complaining, I’m sure.” Nate frowned at my slip, making me roll my eyes at him. “Seriously? You’re going to chew me out over a pronoun slip? It. Happy now?”

“You wouldn’t believe how ecstatic the idea of you dissecting a cadaver makes me,” he replied.

“You’re so damn easy to please,” I offered, but forced myself to get serious. “You’re certain that thing is dead for sure?” Looking at the torso in question, I felt a little stupid for asking, but that was the kind of stupidity that had kept me alive.

Nate nodded. “No pulse, no reaction to any stimulus. All wounds have stopped oozing… whatever it is they were oozing.”

“They actually have a heartbeat?” I asked, not sure whether I should have been surprised or not.

“They have something,” Pia replied. “It’s enough to keep a low blood pressure up. It should be not enough to sustain working muscle, but they only breathe to scream, so what do I know? That’s why they leak rather than spurt. I think.”

Hearing her offer her opinion with a note of hesitation was coming close to anathema. Then again, she usually only spoke up when she was right and had a reason to. It was still somewhat unsettling.

Looking around, I skimmed over the tools set aside on a surgical tray, picking up the only familiar one—a scalpel. My hand shook ever so slightly as I brought it to the left shoulder of the torso, but stopped before actually touching it. “Can somebody wipe that down real quick? I’d like to see approximately what I’m cutting into.” I was also tempted to gripe why I had apparently been elevated to stand-in medical examiner while Martinez was playing nurse, but it was oddly reminiscent of that time when they’d had me cut out the necrotic and inflamed tissue from Nate’s rendezvous with the rebar. There probably was a reason why Martinez had dropped out of med school in the first place.

It took Martinez a good minute to sponge away the worst of it—not that things got much better then. The zombie might have looked a lot better than most others when it was still up and moving, but from up close there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was. At my touch, I felt the tissue give, just a little more than healthy pectoral muscles should have done, as if there was something not quite cohesive about the connective tissue.

“You’re stalling,” Nate murmured close to me, his tone strangely comforting. Not that I strictly needed comfort, but it was good to know that he was there.
 

Exhaling loudly—and immediately regretting it because it sent agony through my ribcage—I resigned myself to my fate, and took the first cut. Skin, muscle, and everything underneath right down to the bones gave, thankfully not making any squishing, sucking noises. It was oddly fascinating to see it all part so readily, and made the entire affair a lot easier. Clinical detachment—helping scientists do unspeakable things since the dawn of time.

The lines I cut were less than perfect—or even straight—and I had no idea where exactly the cuts from the shoulders should meet at the sternum, but within a minute I had opened the chest cavity. Gritting my teeth with trepidation, I put the scalpel down and reached into the cut I’d made down the abdomen, pulling the heavy flaps apart. Vile odor met me—which was saying something after how the room already reeked—making me back away instinctively.

The zombie’s head reared up, teeth snapping toward my arms, only the heavy restraints that I hadn’t dared remove keeping it in place.

Shouting, I staggered back just as Nate rammed his shoulder into my chest, pushing me out of the way. Pain raced through me but I ignored it, just happy to be out of range. A very limited range, I had to admit as I watched the zombie continually snap its teeth, not even getting its chin anywhere near its chest thanks to the thick band that kept the neck firmly planted on the operation table.

“Holy shit!” Martinez echoed my sentiment perfectly, safely tucked away between the meat wall Pia and Andrej formed on the other side of the table. I briefly looked at him, meeting his gaze for a second before I looked back at the zombie.

“Please don’t tell me those fuckers are impossible to kill,” I said, meaning it.

Nate was studying it, head cocked to the side. “I’m sure that severing the head will do the trick.”

“Don’t!” I heard myself shout before my mind could catch up. The vehemence in my voice was even more surprising. Nate glanced back over his shoulder, his brows raised in question. I shrugged, very carefully. “Not yet, at least. You want to find out how they function? Well, let’s see how many times it comes back. Then you don’t have to grab a fresh one for this.”

He considered my suggestion for a moment, weighing the options. It was easy to guess why he hesitated—as long as the zombie was “alive,” there was a good chance that Martinez or I would make a mistake and get infected—but it was an opportunity that wasn’t easily ignored. He finally settled on looking at Martinez, then me. “Your call. Feel free to give us a list of what to do if you prefer staying clear of it.”

Martinez looked happy to opt for that, but I shook my head. “I’ll stay. It will be quicker and more efficient like this. And of the entire bunch of us, I’m likely the one best trained to work under this kind of dangerous conditions.”

“Yeah, because petri dishes are likely to bite your fingers off,” Andrej jeered.

I glared at him, noting with satisfaction as his humor gave way to a hint of acknowledgement. Or was that even respect?

“That it snaps actually makes it safer. And as this just proved, you did a good job securing it. As long as I don’t cut myself, I should be good.” Maybe even then. The zombies didn’t seem to be that infectious. Sure, we’d lost Innes to a deep scratch that he hadn’t even realized he’d gotten, but as deep as the wound had been, it would likely have led to a sepsis even without the virus. We’d never found out how he’d gotten injured exactly. Small scrapes or the inevitable particles that all of us must have ingested with food that we touched or the ever deadly rubbing of eyes, noses, and mouths didn’t seem to be a problem. I certainly didn’t want to find out if slicing myself with a scalpel contaminated with zombie goo would make a difference, but I trusted my manual dexterity enough to be certain that wouldn’t happen.
 

Catching Martinez’s gaze, I said, “Go. I got this.” I could tell that he really wanted to take my offer, and it was probably machismo only that made him hesitate. “Sheesh, Martinez, beat it. I can’t use you here if you get squeamish on me, anyway.” He nodded his gratitude and beat it, leaving me with the heavy hitters and the recipient of the worst that we could jointedly do.

“Exactly how much of this equipment works?” I asked, looking around the room. They must have dragged in some generators because the lights were on bright, and the electric bone saw had been working perfectly.

“Pretty much everything,” Nate replied. “And I can send someone out to get more fuel if our stash runs dry.”

“Then let’s put this theory of those fuckers not dying until they’re decapitated to the test,” I suggested, picking up the defibrillator paddles. “Let’s start with electricity. Anyone know how these work?”

Chapter 14

It was night by the time Nate helped me peel myself out of the soaked-through scrubs and the layers underneath. Abusing the generators for a makeshift shower might have been nice, but I could barely keep myself on my feet for an impromptu sponge bath. The last dose of painkillers had left me woozy and lightheaded, and it was a good thing that the seventh time we’d finished off the zombie, it had remained dead. So no, decapitation wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was by far the quickest, easiest route. And a lot less revolting than what we’d spent the remainder of the day with.

I couldn’t help but feel filthy even after removing as much as possible of the sweat and grime from my body.
 

What bothered me even more was the deadening feeling of nothing that had taken hold of me, and not even Nate’s decidedly non-platonic touch as he removed the bandages from around my ribs helped with that. For once, he wasn’t a dick about me not feeling very amorous and dropped the point without me having to snap at him. That I wasn’t up for keeping watch or making a sortie tomorrow morning was a given.

“Any instructions you have for the team for tomorrow?” he asked as he turned toward the door to leave me to my wallowing self. Just because I didn’t need to stand watch didn’t exempt him.

I forced my sluggish thoughts to reform into a semblance of coherency. “How many of the normal ones do we have locked up? Most things we can likely test on them, too. No need to risk anyone’s life.”