Dead, but Not for Long (16 page)

~*~

Snake came back from the cafeteria and approached Jack.

“Jack,” Snake started in his raspy voice, “I need a head count for lunch. I’ve got a couple
of my guys working on some hot meals. I just need to know how many.”

Jack thought about it. “We can ask Keith about the third floor and I’ll call up to ask about the other floors.”

He turned to Marla and tried to keep a straight face as she poked a closed umbrella under the vending machine.

“Marla, I don’t mean to disturb your, uh, project, but would you happen to know where Keith is?”

Marla looked up and thought about it for a second.

“He’s in one of the rooms. He said he might have to shoot a patient or something.”

By the time she finished her sentence, Jack was already moving down the hall.

~*^*~

Eric was bewildered. The man he had loathed for so long now not only needed him, but
trusted him. His mind was in turmoil. He wrestled with the fact that Miguel
wasn’t the demon he had imagined him to be. In fact, he seemed quite the
opposite. He couldn’t face the fact that he had hated the man for so many years without
reason. He would have to rethink everything.

Miguel stood up and started to walk back to the house.

As Eric followed, he noticed a small bandage on Miguel’s back where his shirt had
traveled up. The patch was visibly oozing something pink. Eric guessed it was a
mixture of blood and pus, from the looks of it.

Miguel turned to see Eric staring at the spot. He quickly pulled his shirt down and continued on.

Eric wasn’t sure what he should do. He decided to do what he did best and act ignorant, pretending
he hadn’t seen anything, but he would have to warn Cheri when the opportunity presented itself.

Miguel stopped at a post that held an array of solar panels and he waited for Eric.

“I think this is going to end up being one of my better decisions,” Miguel said, pointing to the
panels. “The university actually helped to pay for this. In exchange, I take groups of students here to see the system in action.

Miguel had entered the country years earlier on a work visa. The little money he had
earned working as a laborer on various farms had been a windfall compared to
the wage that he had earned in southern Mexico. He had quickly gained a
reputation for his honesty and hard work. It had taken him over ten years to
become a citizen, but when he did, it had been one of the happiest days of his
life. Shortly afterward, he had met Cheri. They had married and had bought
eighty acres of farmland in Gratiot County, which they had cultivated, allowing
them to scrape out a modest living.

Miguel had been able to take some college classes during the winter, securing a degree in
agriculture several years later. Soon he was teaching at the same university
while Cheri had stayed home and raised their two children. Eventually they had
leased out most of their acreage, keeping a small piece of land for their own
use while the teaching job had brought home the bread.

“When the power goes out,” Miguel told Eric while pointing to the panels, “these are going to save our nalgas.”

Cheri came out to where Miguel and Eric were talking.

“Done with your pep talk?” she asked.

“I think we have an understanding,” Miguel replied. Eric nodded in agreement.

“I was just showing Eric our off-grid resources. If this crisis spreads, the grid could
fail, and we would be forced to become self-reliant. We’d be in better shape
than most people. We’d have power, well water, and a septic tank, and we have
enough canned food in the basement to last us for quite some time.”

“Unless someone realizes how good off we are and decides they need our stuff worse than we do,”
Cheri interjected. “The way I see it, it’s already anarchy out there. Unless
the military takes over, which I don’t see happening soon, we’re on our own.”

“That’s why I invited Eric to stay,” Miguel replied while walking to his truck.

“What?” Cheri didn’t try to hide her disapproval of her husband’s suggestion. “I know I said
he wasn’t dangerous, but he’s got some serious issues.”

“Trust me!” Miguel growled in a manner that she had never witnessed before. “I’m sorry,” he
said, calming himself, “but I’m worried about what could happen to you and the kids.”

He opened the truck box in the back and pulled out two pistols. “That’s also why I got these.”

Cheri was surprised. The frequent firefights in his hometown had made Miguel leery of
firearms. To him, they just added to the upheaval of life in what used to be a
quiet, peaceful town. Cheri didn’t see it that way. She felt that the people
were to blame, not the guns. They had even argued over it in the early days of
their marriage, but they had finally agreed to disagree. Now, with no law
enforcement and civilization slowly deteriorating, he had changed his mind.

He handed a pistol to Cheri.

“We have you, Miguel,” Cheri argued. “We don’t need a half rate security guard.”

Eric bristled at her description of him. He was about to protest when the throbbing in his head
reminded him that Cheri wasn’t in the mood for confrontation.

“We’d better learn how to use these,” Miguel said, ignoring Cheri’s protest. “Care to show
us, Eric?”

Eric beamed with importance. He grabbed the pistol and pulled the magazine from the handle,
checking to see if it contained any rounds. He saw that it was full, showing Miguel and Cheri the entire process.

“This is the clip,” he started. “It contains . . . a lot of bullets. In the field, we call
them rounds.”

He pointed out specific parts of the pistol, naming them. “This is the safety.”

His tutorial was cut short by several rapid shots which made them duck for cover.

~*~

Lenny lay utterly still in the bed, though Keith watched for the slightest sign of
movement. The sound of footsteps coming down the hallway drew his attention,
and he stepped to the door, glad to see that it was Jack.

“We’ve got another bite victim,” Keith said, keeping his voice down so that the patients
in the next room wouldn’t hear. After Jack stepped into the room, Keith closed
the door behind them and told Jack what he’d found.

“He hasn’t become like the others yet, so maybe he won’t, but I didn’t want to take the
chance. I moved his roommate out. Didn’t want to give the guy a heart attack if
I have to, well, you know.” He nodded toward the gun. “It’s got me thinking
that maybe we should talk to the doctors and nurses on the other floors. We
need to find out who is still in the hospital and what the doctors’ specialties
are. We also might need to redistribute some of the work load. It’s going to be
critical to keep an eye on all of the patients. All it’ll take is one infected
person to start this all over again.”

“How about if I get on the intercom and let everyone know the plan?” Jack asked. “We’ll get a
head count for lunch, and Snake’s guys can feed the patients and do security
detail while we have our meeting. Maybe in the cafeteria? That way, we could
get some lunch too. I’ll just have to tell the staff and patients that we have
some volunteers. What do you think, half hour?”

“That sounds good,” Keith said, but it brought up another issue. “I’ll bet our dietitians
are all gone, and we’ve got several patients that are on restricted diets.
There should be a list somewhere in the kitchen, I’d think. Let me know if they
can’t find it and I’ll see what I can do, but a meeting in the cafeteria sounds
good, unless I’m still here.”

“I’ll go get one of Snake’s men to take over here so you can come to the meeting,” Jack suggested as he left the room.

“Thanks,” Keith said, subdued. The infected people he’d killed earlier had been mostly
strangers and they’d all been an immediate threat. He had not had a lot of time
to contemplate his actions before taking them, but he had simply reacted to
defend himself and the others that were with him. This was different. Lenny had
been in Keith’s care for a week and they’d talked a lot. Lenny’s wife had
brought cookies the previous day to thank Keith for taking such excellent care
of her husband. Now Keith was probably going to have to kill him.

~*~

Peeking from their crouched positions, Miguel and Eric found Cheri examining the bale of hay she had just riddled with holes.

“Smith and Wesson 9mm,” she commented. “Nice!”

“H-how did you learn to do that?” Miguel stuttered. “Wait, I don’t want to know.”

“My dad was a sharpshooter,” she informed him. “You were so against guns that I never told you. I’m a pretty fair shot myself.”

“That may come in handy,” Miguel admitted. He turned to Eric. “I guess the lesson’s over.”

Eric looked like a kid on his last day of summer vacation. When he and Cheri had been together,
she had always balked at his suggestion that he teach her how to shoot. Now he knew why.

As Miguel turned to leave, Eric slipped the pistol into his waistband.

Miguel said to Cheri. “I think we should put the beds in the basement. There are no windows,
and the door is solid wood. I think everyone would sleep a lot better.”

Cheri agreed. The basement was 800 square foot, the size of a small apartment. They had
finished it years earlier, making a recreation room for the kids, a guest room,
and a utility room for the battery bank and power inverter. There was also a
small room for their canned foods. If their defenses were breached, the family
could survive almost indefinitely in the basement.

Halfway through the move, Miguel became tired and had to rest. Eric and Cheri continued
transporting the beds, a small refrigerator, a microwave and, of course, the
kids’ video games into the basement. As Miguel rested upstairs on the couch, Eric approached Cheri.

“I’m not sure how to tell you this,” he said carefully, “but I think Miguel may have been bitten.”

Cheri looked at him skeptically.

“What are you trying to pull now?” she asked him. “Miguel’s not like you, Eric. He wouldn’t
risk exposing us. He would have told me. Why do you even think that?”

“Look at his lower back,” he replied. “It’s all infected. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but
I think you should check it out.”

Cheri shook her head.

“It’s probably just a cut or something. I’ll look at it, but this better not be some lame attempt to drive us apart.”

Her hand gestures gave Eric a clear message.

~*~

Lenny gasped suddenly, eyes pleading as his fingers tightened on his sheet. Before Keith
could cross the room, death had stolen the light from Lenny’s eyes and had
released his death grip on the bedding. Keith let out a breath as he reached
down to check for a pulse. He found nothing. He closed the dead man’s eyes and
stepped back, hoping that Lenny wouldn’t reanimate as the others had. Maybe he
was truly dead. Keith wondered how long he might have to wait to find out, and
he deliberated over whether or not to shoot him anyway, to be safe. Before he
could make a decision, Lenny’s eyes sprang open.

~*~

Cheri walked upstairs and approached Miguel, who was lying on his back, staring at the
ceiling. As she came closer, she could see his ashen face. His eyes were devoid
of expression and his breathing was shallow. For a moment, she just watched
him. His hand, which was dangling off the couch, began to twitch. The spasm
then spread to his arm. He shot up to a sitting position and grabbed his arm,
trying to stop the tremors. Turning, his eyes met hers.

“This is going to be harder than I thought,” he whispered.

“What? What’s going to be harder?” she demanded, not wanting to know the answer.

“I-I wanted to make sure you and the kids were okay. I was just going to drop off the guns and
make sure you were safe.”

“Miguel,” she asked, “have you been infected?”

His eyes turned away and stared vacantly at the wall. He stood up, his arm still shaking.

“It’s time to say goodbye.”

~*^*~

“Ah, shit,” Keith said. His heart began to pound as he raised the gun.

Lenny began to push himself into a sitting position, his milky eyes shifting around the room
until they finally focused on Keith.

Keith stepped closer and took aim, angling the pistol so that it was pointed toward the
outside wall, rather than the next room. As Lenny reached for him, lips curled
back in a snarl, Keith began to apply pressure to the trigger, yet he still
didn’t take the shot. What if there was a cure? What if Keith pulled the
trigger only to find out the next day that the violent symptoms could have been
reversed? These thoughts gave him pause.

“Lenny, can you understand me?” Keith asked as his patient swung his feet over the side of the
bed. There was no sign of recognition, and the only expression visible on Lenny’s face was hunger.

Lenny lunged at Keith.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, pulling the trigger. He watched his patient fall back onto the bed, his face a ruined mess.

Jack heard the gunshot and hurried back to the room. “Well, I guess we don’t need a guard after all.”

“I guess not,” Keith said quietly.

“He may be better off than we are. It’s over for him. For us, it’s just begun.”

As Jack walked back to the nurses’ desk and started to speak on the intercom, Keith stepped
over to the window to look outside. He watched as the infected roamed the streets
and the parking lot and he wondered if the rest of the world was also falling
apart. After a few minutes, he left the room and closed the door, refraining
from looking at Lenny’s body on the way out.

~*~

When it was time for the meeting, he asked Marla to keep an eye on the floor. When she looked
down at the tiles, he said, “I didn’t mean that literally. Just watch the
patients and send a message over the intercom if anything happens.”