The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (6 page)

I smiled, a forced expression. He was just a little too gleeful about all this even while I was hesitating my ass off. Weren’t we supposed to be so in tuned to each other’s moods and shit? Wasn’t that our thing? So why wasn’t he doing the thing with me now when I kind of needed him to look me in the eye, get all gooey and say, “I can sense you’re not totally on board, let’s have a latte and talk.”

Okay, everything except the nonexistent lattes.

“Come back here, you’re never going to believe this,” he said instead with another of those ‘world-saver’ grins.

My stomach turned as I walked toward him.
You’re never going to believe this
was never exactly a
good
thing to hear in the middle of a post-apocalyptic crisis. Trust me, this is just the truth.

I walked into the back room and screeched to a halt. Nicole was standing at a table, looking over some kind of map and next to her was a girl I recognized. A girl Dave and I had met in Seattle right at the beginning of the outbreak and never thought we’d see again.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, hardly looking up.

What the hell was her name? Her family had run a Korean restaurant in the International District, she’d been all badass when we bumped into her, but she wouldn’t leave with us. I could picture it all but couldn’t remember her name.

“It’s Lisa,” Dave prompted. “Remember from the restaurant way back last year?”

I snapped my fingers. “Lisa! Of course. Wow… you’re
here
?”

She looked up again, all annoyance. Yup, same girl, only now she had a kicky short haircut and leather pants. Right out of a novel, all she needed was a magical tattoo and a soul mate and she would have been a bestseller.

“I could ask the same of you,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “I wouldn’t have placed money on you two making it out of the neighborhood alive, let alone having anything to do with the cure. But what do you know? Miracle of miracles, you’re our saviors somehow.”

I bit my lip, trying to hold back a string of snark that would blister the ears of every person in the lab.

“Well, it’s nice to see you, too,” I finally managed with great difficulty. “But what a small world.”

“A lot smaller since we got an eighty percent mortality/zombie rate,” Lisa said with a roll of her eyes.

I was both impressed with her sarcasm skill and annoyed by them. Was this how people felt with me? No wonder Dave had wanted that divorce a year ago. But I was an old dog, it was hard to learn new tricks. Especially when snarky served me so well.

“I
meant
what a small world that you’d end up here where we’d see you again. How did you go from locked in a restaurant downtown to up here in the U-District working at the lab where the outbreak started?”

Lisa glanced at me briefly.

“They bombed down there,” she said, her voice flat and emotionless even though her eyes were deep fathoms of grief. “I barely got out with my life. And the city was in chaos at the point. It was ugly, I’ll just say that. But eventually I got found by a group of soldiers who had been abandoned to die in Seattle.”

My eyes widened. “The soldiers here at the lab?”

She gave one curt nod. “Eventually we came here to try to figure out if we could do something about the outbreak. We were here when Robbie and their crew got here with way more information and experience. Now we do what we can to protect them.”

I drew in a breath. I’d seen a lot of shit since escaping the city and heard a lot more from survivors over the months. But I was always impressed by those who came out on top. All of our survival stories were unique and powerful. I should totally write a book about them if we get out of this alive at any point.

“So have you had your blood tests?” Lisa asked, shaking her head in a way that said the subject of her survival was closed, probably permanently.

“Oh yeah, that’s our next stop,” Dave said with a nod.

“Blood tests?” I repeated with a quick glance at Dave. Nice that he was setting these things up for me without saying anything. “What blood tests?”

He raised a brow at my terse tone.

“No biggie. We just need to head over to Robbie and let him get a bit of our blood to run some standard tests, as well as some slightly
un
-standard tests. Actually, I’m sure he’ll want to take tons of mine, but for you it sounds like just a vial or two.”

I clenched my fists at my sides. Standard tests.

“I just don’t see why it’s necessary,” I insisted.

Lisa and Nicole looked at me from the table in a weird, ‘why are you freaking out’ way.

“After everything, are you scared of needles, Sarah?” Nicole laughed. “That would be hilarious. Headline: Biggest Apocalypse Badass Cries at Sight of Needle.”

“It’s not needles,” I managed through clenched teeth.

“Then let’s go,” Dave insisted, placing a hand on the small of my back to guide me toward the door away from the others. “See you ladies later.”

“Bye,” both of them said at once before they returned to their map of the campus. I could hear them talking as we left about clearing buildings and something about the schedule of perimeter patrols.

We moved back into the main area of the lab and I felt myself starting to lean back against Dave’s hand, dragging my feet so we wouldn’t have to go to the other lab room. Dave glanced at me and I felt the pressure on my back increase as he gently shoved me toward wherever we were supposed to be.

“What’s up with you?” he asked, trying not to draw attention to us by smiling at people we passed.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said under my breath and through my clenched teeth.

“Why?” he asked and I could hear the tension and annoyance in his tone despite the calmness of his expression. “Sarah, it’s just what they do here when they have new people come. We aren’t any different. You’re being paranoid.”

He ushered me into a room and shut the door. I bit my lip as I saw needles in sterilized containers and vials already ready. Our names were marked on them with a red Sharpie. The “h” in my name had dripped a little and it looked like a bloody wound.

“
Why
do they do it?” I asked. “Why do they need to get my blood?”

“To limit the spread of disease, not zombie stuff, but regular stuff. To see the impact of the way we’ve been living. And yeah, they’ll probably use it for tests on other things like the virus and the inoculation and all that shit.” He folded his arms. “You’ve never been freaked out by tests like this, Sarah, so why are you completely losing your shit?”

“I don’t
like
needles,” I tried, pathetically weak.

He arched a brow. “Sarah.”

“I’m not losing my shit,” I insisted. “Okay, I’m not.”

I might have said more and avoided a bunch of drama, but the door opened and Robbie stepped in with another girl at his side. She was probably our age, with a slick ponytail and gloves on.

“This is Nadia,” he said, distracted. “She is going to help me draw the blood.”

“Okay, Dr. Robbie,” I said with a scowl. I guess there was no getting out of it.

Dave shook his head. “She’s a little nervous, can I go first?”

The girl, Nadia, looked at him with wide eyes. “So you’re the one,” she said. “I heard about you, even in Vegas after the outbreak. You look so… normal.”

I scowled a little deeper. Nurse Beautiful was just staring at my husband and I didn’t have a lot of patience at present.

“Yeah, he’s a freaking god, can you just take his blood?” I snapped.

She looked at me and she blushed. “Sorry. I-I lost someone, you see, on a beach on the coast when this all started. I was thinking about what would have happened if
I’d
had a cure. I’ll take the blood.”

Okay, so now I felt like an asshole. I folded my arms and watched as she inserted a needle into Dave’s arms and dark red blood began to pump into the vial. It matched the Sharpie on the label on the vial.

“We’ll need a lot more from you,” Robbie said with an apologetic tilt of his head.

“Yeah, I figured.”

“We’ll start with a few vials, though, just for some baseline stuff,” the boy continued. “In the meantime, though, while you’re getting the blood taken…”

He trailed off as he turned toward a small refrigerator in the room. He opened it and withdrew a bottle filled with purple liquid. He drew some into a hypodermic and turned toward me.

“We’ll just give you this,” he said, moving toward me with the unknown substance.

I backed away. “What the fuck is that?”

Robbie’s brow wrinkled and Nadia looked up from her blood collection. Even Dave stared at me.

“Shit, Sarah, I’m not going to hurt you,” Robbie said, stopping his movement toward me. “This is a
good
thing. It’s our inoculation serum. Once you take this, we’re about ninety-eight percent certain that a zombie bite won’t turn you. In another week or two, that will probably be at a ninety-nine-point-nine percent certainty.”

I swallowed. What he held was a miracle in a bottle. A world-saver, a game-changer.

And I didn’t want a thing to do with it.

I rushed to put the table in the middle of the room between me and the rest of them and stood there, bracing against it, ready to maneuver if someone tried to force my hand.

“No,” I said. “I won’t take that.”

“Why the hell not?” Dave asked, jerking his arm away from Nadia and sending a squirt of blood to the floor that everyone moved away from like it was poison. He didn’t seem to care, he was too focused on me. “Take the fucking serum, Sarah.”

I blinked, mostly to keep tears from showing up in my eyes. I didn’t want him to see that. They wouldn’t help me in a few minutes anyway…

“I can’t,” I whispered, trying to duck his stare, trying to find a way to keep away from him and from them even for a few more minutes.

“Sarah, you
have
to take it,” Robbie tried, inserting himself between David and me like a peacekeeping force. “Everyone else on the base has taken it and I assure you it has not hurt anyone, regardless of bloodtype, race, weight or any other variable.”

“I doubt you’ve seen my variable,” I half-laughed even though this was anything but funny right now.

“What is your variable, Sarah?” Dave asked, his eyes narrowed. “I know you’ve been keeping something from me.”

I blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah. I’ve been waiting for you to find the right time to tell me whatever has been bugging you, but now you’re acting like a freaker and you’re making a federal case out of a miracle. So tell
everyone
what it is now.”

I swallowed hard. Here it went.

“I can’t take the serum because… because I’m pregnant,” I admitted. I held stares with David, only because I felt like I owed him that much after all my recent lies.

He stared at me, the color bleeding from his cheeks, the light in his eyes dimming. He looked angry, confused, shocked, sad and even a tiny bit excited all at once. All the same emotions I’d been feeling while I kept the truth to myself and tried to figure out a way to tell him everything. Some way to soften a blow neither of us had seen coming, certainly hadn’t planned for.

“And because of Dave’s…
thing
…” I continued with a sigh. “I don’t know what your inoculation might do to the baby.”

Chapter Six

And zombie makes three.

The moment my stunning announcement left my lips Nadia and Robbie began talking at once. I’m sure they were saying very important things that I should have been listening to, but all I could do was stare at Dave. Dave who was glaring at me with ultimate betrayal in his eyes. Dave who hadn’t moved or spoken since the word
pregnant
left my lips like the worst curse in the world.

Finally, he stepped forward. “What. The. Fuck. Sarah.”

His voice was so loud and so strong that it silenced the other two in an instant. There was a moment of shocked silence between us all and then Nadia grabbed Robbie’s arm and began hauling him to the door.

“Come on, kid, let’s go.”

Robbie resisted even as she dragged him out. “But-”

“They need a minute, Jesus,” she said as she shut the door behind them. All the animosity I’d felt when I met her faded in that moment of kindness.

Of course, staring at Dave and his ‘how could you’ face, I sort of wished Nadia and The Kid had stayed and kept it awkward. I preferred awkward right now.

“Are you sure?” he asked, folding his arms as he stared at me like I was a stranger.

I nodded. “I took about twenty of those at-home tests, at all times of the day. They all came back positive.”

I watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple working hard. His hands had started to shake, too. Not good.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

That one was a harder question to answer.

“Um, a couple of months,” I finally whispered. “I found out when we were on the road from Wyoming to Montana. I guess it’s why I’ve gained some weight lately. Remember how you kept joking about all I needed was hamburgers? Well, I didn’t just need hamburgers.”