The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (14 page)

“Yeah.” I smoothed the hair back from his forehead and smiled. "It's kind of our thing, isn’t it?”

He nodded, but I could see he was getting overcome by exhaustion. Emotional sleep I used to call it (though I was much pissier about it back then). Dave had always gotten tired when he was super stressed.

“I won’t be up too late,” I promised.

He grunted and rolled over and I left him there, doing his zombie breathing thing and headed into the hallway.

#

I don’t know what I intended to do as I roamed the hallways. But unlike Dave, I couldn’t sleep when I was stressed. My mind would race, running over options, scenarios, fears, plans until I wanted to scream from how loud all that shit was in my head.

Tonight was no different and I moved through the hallways, pondering everything that had happened since all this started so long ago.

Only one thing pierced my thoughts and that was the faint sound of voices as I turned a corner and headed down a dark hallway. At first I thought they were from people in the makeshift bedrooms in the old professor offices, but there were too many, they were too loud and I moved toward them like a little bee to honey.

I found an open door and a large room filled with light from lanterns and candles. It looked like it had been a conference room of some kind, but the old table had been shoved to a back wall and replaced with some couches in a half-circle. Couches currently inhabited by Nadia, Drea, McCray and Nicole. There was a big, black dog lying next to Nadia and she stroked his head gently.

“Hey,” I said softly as I stood in the doorway. The group all stopped talking at once and turned to stare at me. I could see it in their eyes that I had been the topic of conversation. “Is it okay if I join you, or will that mess up anything you’re saying about me?”

Nicole shrugged. “Of course, come in.” She motioned to an empty seat near Nadia.

She and McCray smiled and they were totally real, but I could see the others were more uncomfortable.

“I get it,” I reassured them as I sat down on a comfy chair and tucked my feet up under me. “If I knew someone carrying a sort-of-zombie baby, I would totally talk about them. So if you think I’m pissed or something, I’m not. I’m happy to even talk to you about it, answer questions, though I don’t really know any more than say, Nadia or Nicole or Josh or the freaking
child
who runs the lab.”

Drea chuckled. “Man-child, you mean,” she said with a shake of her head. “You certainly gave us a handful when you asked us to keep watch over Robbie.”

Nadia wrinkled her brow. “You guys gave Robbie over to Josh and Drea?” she asked.

I nodded. “He’s really competent, obviously. And smart as a whip, as well as annoying as hell. But he’s also still a pre-teen. When we left Phoenix, we knew we couldn’t leave him alone. And he wanted to stay with his lab and keep working. So we tortured our friends by giving them The Kid.”

Drea’s face softened. “He grows on you. You’ll see when you have your own son.”

“We’ll see,” I said, noncommittal because I honestly didn’t know how to answer. “I might be one of those awful Moms who hands off her kids to the help or something.”

“I doubt it,” Nicole laughed.

“Yeah, Sarah, you run everything around you, I can’t imagine you won’t have that boy marching to your drum five minutes after he pops his head out and says ‘ello,” McCray agreed.

“Spoken like a bunch of people who never had kids,” I laughed. I turned my attention back to Nadia. “How about you? You said you lost someone on the beach when it started, but do you have kids?”

She motioned to the dog. “Just Duncan here.”

“Then you’re the biggest expert among us,” Drea laughed.

“I wanted kids,” Nadia continued, her eyes going all faraway and sad like pretty much everyone’s did when the subject of Before Zombie came up at any length. “But my boyfriend, Randy, didn’t want them. He said yet, but he meant never. And we had… issues that sort of trumped any ticking biological clock, so I didn’t push it.”

I nodded. “I get that. So was he the one who died?”

She hesitated. “Yeah. Well, got turned.”

I flinched. That was worse. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I headed for Vegas at first, hoping to find my sister, but that didn’t work, obviously. Then I wanted to get to the East Coast and my parents, but… well, there aren’t many ways to get across that wall, are there? So I ended up back here. Like a salmon.”

I laughed at the image, but said, “Go with a homing pigeon.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because salmon die once they return to their home stream and spawn.”

“Ah.” She saluted me. “Gotcha.”

“And you’ve been alone all this time,” Nicole asked and I was surprised that she placed her hand over McCray’s. Yup, totally an item.

Nadia paled a little. “Mostly.”

Obviously there was a lot more story here than she wanted to tell. Maybe more than we wanted to hear. We all had seen and heard and even done things during the apocalypse that we didn’t want to share, to remember. Nadia deserved her secrets as much as the next guy. Girl. Whatever.

“Sarah,” Nicole said and I could see she was trying to give Nadia her space, too. “You’ll be fine.”

“Assuming Colonel Fenton doesn’t snatch my baby the second it leaves my body or something,” I said.

McCray frowned and he and Nicole exchanged a brief look that I didn’t particularly care for.

“Fenton is…” he began.

“McCray,” Nicole said softly and he shut his mouth.

I pursed my lips. “If the guy is dangerous, I think I should know that for my own safety.”

Drea shifted a little. “Look, I came into this lab after everyone else, with Robbie. I don’t work with the lab rats, I just organize the kitchen, work on the supplies, that sort of thing, so I don’t hang with Fenton all that much or anything, but he’s… I think he has the right motives. At least in his own head.”

I stared at her. “Not exactly a ringing endorsement if his ‘right motives’ prompt him to steal my baby or kill my husband or take me off to get probed or something.”

“He’s a Colonel, not an alien, I doubt he’ll get you probed,” Nicole said with a smile.

I did not share in it. “You know what I mean.”

“I won’t say you don’t have to be careful, Sarah,” Nicole said, getting up and motioning for McCray to join her. “We all have to be careful now, don’t we?”

I nodded. I got it. They weren’t sure of Fenton either, but they weren’t exactly ready to go out on a limb against a guy who was protecting them. Us?

“At this point,” Drea added. “Getting the serum done and ready to distribute has to be our main goal. It’s how we’re going to save the world. And Fenton is a necessary part of that equation.”

“Yeah,” I said, but as everyone, including me, got up and started to disburse, I had to wonder what the cost of that necessary part might be in the end.

Chapter Thirteen

Expose your child to all different kinds of people and experiences. And zombies. Make sure he knows about the zombies.

I sat in an office overlooking Red Square and stared out at the rainy red bricks and beyond them to the fence where zombies sometimes shambled by. There were other things I could have been doing, of course. Dave wanted me to come down and help with some of the tests, Drea had offered me a place helping with the supplies, even The Kid had said he didn’t mind having me around (high praise, indeed) but for the moment, all their offers were turned down.

I just wanted to sit. By myself. Okay, not by myself, with my zombie-benefitted son, and ponder what the fuck I’d done in my life to lead me to this place. My answers were very navel-staring and melancholy, so I won’t get too far into them. Besides, I didn’t have too much time to wallow, because there was a light knock on the wall of the office after I’d been there for only a half an hour or so.

I swiveled the office chair and was surprised to find Lisa standing there.

“You don’t look like a Stephen,” she said as she leaned on the door jam and motioned to the name plate on the desk that had once belonged to Professor Stephen Garret.

“I don’t feel like one, either. Maybe a Stephanie.”

I laughed and touched the belly that seemed like it had swelled a little more overnight. Once that baby went supernova, it seemed like he wasn’t screwing around. Which proved he was my boy, for sure, I guess.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked. “I figured you’d be out and about already, being a super soldier.”

Her mouth quirked in a half-smile. “Well, I wondered if you wanted to come out with me.”

Both my eyebrows lifted. “You want me to come with you? Even after everything we heard yesterday about super zombie babies and my rapidly advancing condition and all that jazz?”

Lisa shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t give a crap about that stuff. I just need help killing things and you are much better than the yes, ma’am/no ma’am soldiers who follow me around like a puppy. It’s like, shit, you’re not in the army anymore, buddy. Just be a dude.”

My brow wrinkled. Here was a new version of Lisa, all nice and kind of funny. Were those warning bells going off in my head now? Screaming, “Danger, Sarah!! Danger!!!”

Yeah, if they were, I ignored them.

“I have to admit, I did enjoy zombie killing again. What do you have in mind for today?” I asked.

She grinned and flopped down a map in front of me. It was one of the ones for new students, all pretty colors and funny little keys with things like food and fun hangouts marked. The thing that was less cute was the big perimeter that Lisa had penciled in with red pencil out in the middle of the map.

“Well, they’ve gated off the student union now, so we’ve reclaimed a bit more of campus.”

She indicated Husky union, which was within the fence line. I smiled: accomplishment!

“But right behind that building-” She indicated on the map. “-here, is Hall Health.”

I jerked my face up. “You want the medical supplies.”

“Bingo.”

I pushed to my feet. “Well, considering I’m apparently going to have a baby in five to ten minutes, I’m all for it. I’ll definitely help.”

“And the bonus is that the building is way smaller than the HUB,” Lisa said.

“Then what are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let me leave a note for Dave so he won’t be super pissed like last time.”

“Just moderately pissed?” she asked.

I hesitated. “Yeah, he doesn’t want me going out. But we’re not attached at the hip and if he has to do what he has to do, I guess the same is true of me.”

Lisa smiled. “Okay, write your note and I’ll get us loaded for bear, er zombie.”

“Just not zombie bears,” I laughed as I walked into the hall with her and headed toward the room I shared with Dave to leave my note. “I think there are some things I just couldn’t take.”

#

Within forty-five minutes, we were stepping from the lab building, loaded to the hilt with weaponry, walking in the cold rain toward the HUB we’d cleared the day before and Hall Health behind it.

“So looking at your map, I was surprised you didn’t have more of the campus within the fence line,” I said. “How did you get the amount of supplies you have?”

Lisa shrugged. “When we first got here, what we really wanted to secure was the lab. We went out to different buildings in groups and got what we needed, then brought it back. In the beginning, it was a guard and shoot thing. Then the soldiers drove out and got the fencing. Little by little, we built it up.”

I nodded slowly. That would explain why everyone was so hesitant to blame the military force here for anything. They really had saved the day. Still did by providing a larger and larger safe haven.

“You still do guard and shoot, though,” I pointed out.

She nodded. “Oh yeah. The fences aren’t always completely perfect. So we keep up the guard and have them out checking the line, too. So far, the system works.”

“I’d say so if you’re willing to expand to create a larger and larger ‘city’ within this wall. What happens when stragglers who aren’t zombies come in?”

Lisa ducked her head, like she was looking for something, but I saw the look on her face. The pain.

“There aren’t a lot of stragglers left. They hit this city hard, both in terms of zombies, since it was ground zero, and in terms of wiping out any population, zombie or human, with bombing runs.”

“Sounds like we got out just in time.”

She looked at me for a minute, her face unreadable, and then motioned to the fence. “Here’s where we’ll duck out to get to Hall Health. Ready?”

I pulled a pistol and checked that it was fully loaded, ran a hand over the rest of my shit just to make sure I had a sense of where it was and nodded.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

She popped the gate and we hurried out and locked it behind us. A couple of zombies roaming the fence line, banging on it like they were looking for soft spots, immediately started over toward us, growling and grunting.

“Use silent weapons,” Lisa advised. “Might as well not bring the hoard.”

“Comforting,” I murmured as I replaced my pistol and exchanged it for a machete.

The first zombie was naked, rotting breasts swinging in the wind as she run up on me, growling and grunting as she waved her clawed hands around. I slashed the machete and it thudded as it whisked through the softening bone and tissue of her skull. She wheezed as the top part of her head slid away and she sank to the ground in a pile.