The Dead Series (Book 2): Dead Is All You Get (17 page)

“One word that we could make out,” Warnick said. “After that, it was a lot of gibberish.”

“Amazing.”

“She doesn’t appear to be exhibiting the same symptoms as the others we’ve seen. And there’s something going on with her eyes.”

“I don’t think she was bitten,” I said.

Nancy turned to me, her arms folded, half-smiling. “Said the pretend doctor.” Holding my temper, I ignored her.

“What do you mean?” Holly said. “How else could she have turned?”

Warnick looked at me, a little irritated. “You don’t think she was deliberately infected?”

“That’s exactly what I think. Warnick, you said it yourself. Her symptoms are different. Remember the draggers we encountered in the forest before we were rescued? That’s what we’ve been seeing since this thing started. This woman is carrying another form of the virus.”

“And how do you know this, Dr. Nick?” Bud said. I actually appreciated
The Simpsons
reference, but I still wanted to pimp-slap this guy.

Isaac stepped between us. “There’s an easy way to find out. We’ll test her.”

After Isaac had left, Bud turned to me, arrogant as hell. “You people should leave and let the
real
scientists do our job.”

I closed in on him. “And you should bite me.”

“Oh, you want to do this?” Bud said, throwing down the chart.

Warnick grabbed my arm. “Dave, come on. We don’t have time for this.”

Springer helped pull me away and, looking past me, glared comically at Bud. “You don’t want to mess with this guy, Sheldon.”

After a few minutes, Isaac returned with a needle and syringe, three vials and the cattle prod. On his signal, the Vollmer twins opened the door and, holding the cattle prod, waited for Isaac to enter. We watched as the scientists immobilized the woman, then held her down so Isaac could search for a vein in her arm. It took a few minutes, but he was able to draw enough blood for the tests. When they were finished, the woman lay still on the cot, staring vacantly.

“How long?” I said to Isaac.

“A couple of hours. I suggest you return to your base. I’ll come by later with the results.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Warnick said.

As we made our way towards the exit, a commotion erupted in one of the cells nearby. A patient thrashed violently, exhibiting the classic symptoms of someone who had turned. It was mostly in the eyes—he no longer saw. Then we heard the death shriek. A series of bright blue lights flashed in sequence along the top of the cell. Moments later, an orderly appeared followed by two Black Dragon soldiers. One of the soldiers carried a cattle prod and the other what looked to me like some kind of space gun.

Isaac and the two scientists ran over to join them. We followed.

“Whadda ya say, Doc?” one of the soldiers said.

Isaac took a moment to assess the patient. He conferred with the immunologists and sadly he lowered his head. The soldier with the cattle prod flicked a finger at the orderly, who unlocked and opened the door. The soldier repeatedly zapped the patient into submission, attacking different parts of his torso each time. This appeared to weaken the patient, and he collapsed backwards onto the cot.

The other soldier approached and placed the space gun against the patient’s forehead. He pressed a button. A scorching high-pitched whine ripped open our eardrums, and the patient stopped moving. A stench rose—he’d evacuated his bowels.

“What happened?” Holly said.

“Ultra high-frequency radio waves,” Bud said.

Nancy nodded. “Fries the frontal lobe in seconds. Very effective.”

“We don’t want to be firing projectiles in this place,” Isaac said. “Not with all these other patients.”

Outside, we shook hands with Isaac, avoiding his weird friends.

“How many patients are there?” Holly said.

“We’re over six hundred,” Isaac said. “There seem to be more every day.”

The four of us sat in the conference room, waiting for Pederman to say something.

“Doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “I need to report this.”

“Can you at least wait until the results come in?” Warnick said.

“Why?”

“I think we should have all the facts first.”

“I don’t know …”

Warnick was insistent. “Dr. Fallow is performing tests on the woman. We should at least—”

Erzen stuck her head in. “Sorry to disturb. One of our patrols found another family holed up at the Pine Nut Motel at the edge of town.”

“What kind of shape are they in?”

“They don’t seem too bad. We brought them in a little while ago. They’re being examined.”

“Thanks, Erzen,” Pederman said. “Keep me posted.” Then to Warnick, “Look, I’ll hold off reporting this for now. But I can’t wait much longer, or we’ll be out of compliance.”

“Got it.”

As we got up to leave, Holly said, “Mr. Pederman, I need to ask you something.”

“Sure, Holly.”

“I want Griffin on our team.”

“Impossible. I’m sorry.”

“But she’s battle-tested. Ask Warnick or Springer.”

“Warnick?”

“She’s awesome in combat,” Warnick said. “And she knows how to handle a weapon.”

“Still,” Pederman said. “Federal law prohibits anyone under the age of eighteen from carrying a weapon.”

“Actually, there is no federal law stating a minimum age for ‘long guns,’” Erzen said. “And there
are
exceptions for hand guns.” Holly and I turned to Erzen hopefully. She seemed confident.

“And you know this how?” Pederman said.

“As you know, I’ve been looking after Griffin. So I took the liberty of doing some research in the library.” Erzen pulled a folded-up piece of paper from her shirt pocket and read from it. “‘Federal law provides exceptions for the temporary transfer and possession of handguns and handgun ammunition for specified activities, including employment, ranching, farming, target practice and hunting.’”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“I don’t know about ranching,” Springer said.

“I think we could argue for target practice and hunting draggers,” I said, looking at Warnick, who smiled for what might have been the first time in his life. “And if you hired her on as an intern, there’s your employment requirement.”

“Seriously, we need her on the team,” Holly said.

“You guys are killing me,” Pederman said. “But it makes sense. Look, we’ll take this one step at a time. I’ll start by fast-tracking her employment and signing her up for target practice. If—
if
—she passes our test, I will issue her a weapon.”

“Works for me,” Holly said.

Outside on the steps, Holly hugged Erzen. “This means a lot to me—thank you.”

“No problem.”

“Why did you do it, Erzen?” I said. “Just curious.”

“Griffin shows a lot of promise. Reminds me of myself at that age. I think a girl needs to protect herself. Don’t you?”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“I can’t wait to tell Griffin,” Holly said.

Fabian found Holly, Griffin and me in the cafeteria eating a late lunch of meat loaf, which looked like it was made mostly from breadcrumbs and ketchup. Griffin had apparently moved past Evie’s death and was bubbling over the news about joining Black Dragon as an intern.

“Fabian, did you hear?” she said.

“I did. Congrats,
guera
.” Then to Holly and me, “Dr. Fallow is here. They’re all waiting in the conference room.”

He left before I could say anything. As we got up, I turned to Griffin.

“What did he call you?”

“
Guera.
He always calls me that.”

“What does it mean?” Holly said.

“‘White girl,’ I think. He means it in a good way.”

I may have rolled my eyes. “Rrright …”

“He told me one of his cousins is, like, really light-skinned, and they call her
guera
.”

“Whatever you say.”

“You’re such a jerk,” she said, laughing.

When we entered the conference room, we found Warnick and Springer sitting with Isaac and Pederman, who were going over the lab results.

“So?” I said.

“So, I can’t explain these results,” Isaac said. “We found evidence of a virus, but it’s not like the one we’ve seen in the other patients.”

“I hope you’re going to explain this in layman’s terms,” Pederman said, smiling.

“Every virus has a signature,” Isaac said. “Much like a computer virus—or a fingerprint. It’s how we can tell the differences between one and another. It’s also how we learn to treat it.”

“And the signature for this one is different?” Holly said.

“That’s what I’m saying. It has many of the characteristics of the other virus, but it is different. I don’t know what the differences mean. But from what I’ve observed in the patient you brought in, it doesn’t destroy the speech area of the brain, which leads me to believe that she may still be capable of rational thought.”

“That sounds a lot like Doctor Royce over at Robbin-Sear.”

“Doctor Royce?”

“We went there to investigate Evie’s murder,” Warnick said. “And two researchers showed us their colleague, who was infected with a new form of the virus.”

“They’d isolated him,” I said, “but he was still working.”

“Did he appear violent?” Isaac said.

“No, but he had this weird tic. He kept swatting at flies that weren’t there.”

“The woman we brought in did that, too,” Holly said.

Isaac looked at Pederman. “Dave seems to think she was deliberately infected.”

Pederman and the others waited for me to say something. It was true that I didn’t have any actual data to back me up, but I knew in my soul I was right. “I do,” I said. “And recently. In fact, I think it happened after Doctor Royce was infected.”

“But why?” Pederman said.

“Dave,” Warnick said. “I know where you’re going with this, but I think you’re wrong.”

“I know what you think, but I’m not wrong. Not about this.”

“It can’t be. They could never get away with it.”

“They
are
getting away with it.”

“Will someone tell me what in all that is holy is going on here?” Pederman said.

“They’re using the people of Tres Marias as guinea pigs,” I said.

The room erupted, with everyone talking at once. It was as if I’d thrown a live grenade into the middle of the conversation.

“You can’t be serious!” Pederman said. “That would mean …”

“That it was planned,” I said.

“So why was that woman in the store? Wouldn’t they be keeping her under observation?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Tres Marias as a giant experiment? I can’t accept that.”

“Mr. Pederman,” I said. “History is full of examples. Evie told us about the Rockefeller Report. For years the DOD experimented on military personnel.”

“Sure, but they weren’t civilians.”

“How about this? And I can thank my old high school science teacher—guess I was paying attention that day.”

“Well?”

“Tuskegee.” I looked at Isaac, who looked away sadly.

The room was silent. Pederman lowered his head and folded his hands. His voice was almost a whisper. “But … that was—it was a long time ago.”

“What was?” Holly said.

Isaac leaned forward. “The Tuskegee Institute conducted an experiment to study the effects of untreated syphilis in men. It was run by the Department of Health, beginning in 1932.”

“That was in Alabama,” Pederman said. “They signed up black sharecroppers. The program ran for forty years.”

“But they eventually treated them, right?” Holly said. “Once there was a cure?”

I shook my head. “That’s the point—they didn’t. And by 1940, they knew that penicillin could have cured those men.”

“So let’s say this
was
planned,” Warnick said. “Who’s doing it?”

“I think you know.”

“The mayor?”

I glanced at Pederman, whose expression was neutral. “Why not? He told us to stay out of his business.”

“Sure, but ...”

“Warnick, let me ask you something. When this thing broke out, why wasn’t a state of emergency declared and the National Guard called in?” No reaction. “Wouldn’t that be normal procedure? Who ever heard of a private security company handling something like this?” Then to Pederman, “No offense.”