Authors: Better Hero Army
Nine
“What’s her name again?” Kennedy asked as she rolled across the floor
on her stool. She wore a white lab coat, her face masked behind white cloth and a clear plastic shield. Her hands were covered in black, nitrile gloves.
“Twenty-two,” a man said from across the room. He stood next to a long counter, measuring out a liquid
into several vials. It was the blood they had just drawn from a needle still protruding from Penelope’s chest.
“No, no, no,” Kennedy told him, picking up a folder from a tray next to the table that Penelope was strapped to. “
She has a name. I saw it in here. Oh, here it is. Hope. That’s right. Well, I sure as hell
hope
this one works. You probably do too, huh?” Kennedy asked Penelope as she slid next to Penelope’s legs again.
The tool
Kennedy held in her hand began to buzz again and she put it against the front of Penelope’s ankle. It was cold and biting, like icy teeth that gnawed at her skin. Penelope began to moan again, a wail of distress, the kind that usually brought others to her. None came. None could hear her.
“
Do you have any tattoos?” Kennedy asked over her shoulder to the man.
“You asked me last time, ma’am. No. None.”
“Well, I do. I had this one done on my ankle, and it hurt like hell, but look at this biter. I’ll bet you five dollars she doesn’t even realize I’m doing this. The damned disease blocks most of their pain receptors.”
“
Most, but not all, right, ma’am?” the man asked.
Doctor Kennedy was silent, but the buzzing continued, and so did the gnawing
on the front of Penelope’s ankle. She tried to squirm, but her feet were secured in some kind of metal box that kept her from wiggling anything more than her toes.
“Are you sure she’s not feeling this?” the man said as he put the vials down on the tray next to the table. Penelope was rigidly secured from head to toe, tilted slightly on her side so that she faced both Kennedy and the man.
“Not pain, no,” Kennedy said, letting the buzzing stop. Penelope took a deep breath and let it out, relieved that the tingling subsided a little. She didn’t like that thing the doctor used. “Can you read these?”
“Twenty-two, twenty-two. Yeah, nice work, ma’am. Once this virus is put down, you’ve got a career ahead of you in a tattoo parlor.”
“Once this virus is put down, I’ve got a lifetime of research just figuring out how it happened in the first place. Look at her. She looks younger than the day she was infected. There’s got to be something useful in all of this, don’t you think?”
“
I think we’re all ready, ma’am. Have I missed anything?”
“What are the oximeter readings? Turn the screen toward me. That’s good. Oh, she’s looking really good. Let me get these mixed and we’ll start. Bring me the
...yeah, that.”
The man carried a small,
sealed jar to Doctor Kennedy and handed it to her. She put it down and switched gloves before picking it up again. She carefully stuck a small needle into it and measured out one dose after another, squirting it into the vials and capping them to shake them.
Penelope wailed again, but
still, no one could hear her.
“Did you ever see that movie,
The Thing
?” the man asked. “Every time you mix, I always think of that scene, you know the one with the needle in the blood.”
“
It was a wire.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. He heats it with a flame thrower. That was so scary when I was a kid.”
“Are you scared?” Kennedy asked, squirting another plunger full of amber liquid into Penelope’s crimson blood.
Penelope moaned.
“Yeah, it’s a little freaky.”
“You’ve got a gun. If anything goes wrong, I’ll give you the signal, and you shoot her in head. As long as her saliva doesn’t get in your blood stream, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Kennedy put down the last of the vials and the needle.
“Are you OK? You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Alright,” Kennedy said, rubbing her hands together. “Looks like we’ve got everything lined up and ready.”
“Ma’am, I’ve been wondering about the tattoos. Why do we do it?”
“We had a setback early on. One of the specimens didn’t take, so they put him back, and then three trips later caught him again. They couldn’t tell it was the same
man, so we started marking them with permanent ink.”
“Why the ankles?”
“Because when you grab a leg to look at their ankle, their feet don’t try to grab you back,” Kennedy said somberly. She picked up a small square device from the tray and held it in front of her mask. She opened the file again and stared at it as she talked into the device.
“
Doctor Danielle Kennedy, Rock Island lab facility, December sixteen, specimen notes for Hope, Penelope, female subject, age at time of missing persons report: nineteen, current age: twenty-four, citizen of the US, weight: one hundred nineteen pounds, height: sixty-seven inches, blood type: AB—I wish we could find a specimen with O-negative, but that’s like asking for lightning to strike where you want it. What else do we have here? Resident of St. Louis, obtained by standard aerial reconnaissance and capture, designation: specimen twenty-two of forty on December 13 after all blood work found no significant medical conditions that might impede result analysis.
“Procedure today will be a series of ten DHT-16
intracardiac injections, consisting of scaled doses starting at 5 CCs DHT-16, 5 CCs adrenalin mixed with 40 CCs of specimen’s own oxygenated blood, with regular increases of 5 CCs DHT-16 in each subsequent injection with final dose of 50 CCs DHT-16, 5 CCs adrenalin. For this procedure we’ve already prepared specimen with a 24-gauge, long spinal needle into the ventricular chamber, inserted between the fourth intercostal space between the ribs.”
Penelope moaned as Doctor Kennedy wiggled the needle sticking out of her chest.
“Specimen shows mild blood stasis with low oxygenation and cardiac function normal for post-infection subjects, albeit higher than average.”
Kennedy took a deep breath
and put down the file and recording device.
“Go ahead and prep the first needle,” Kennedy said. She held
out a hand, waiting for the man to suck Penelope’s own blood back out of the first vial. Kennedy stared into Penelope’s eyes, her head slightly turned to match her angle.
“I always wonder what they’re thinking.”
“Ready,” the man said, placing the needle into Kennedy’s hand.
“First
intracardiac injection at time 11:36 A.M.,” Kennedy said, placing the long needle into the tube. Penelope watched as it slid down the tube into her chest.
“Okay twenty-two, let’s see what you do.”
Fire surged through her body, coursing from her chest and up her neck, out to her shoulders, down toward her legs. Her whole body seized, rigid as stone, her teeth gnashing against the bite guard and muzzle. Her flesh seared as though crisping against an open flame, or melting from the lava that her blood had become. As the pain increased, her vision faded until there was nothing but the white of the room. Nothing but solid white and tremendous pain.
Ten
Penelope screamed, lurching forward in the chair
, and clutched at her chest as if expecting a long tube and needle to be there. The pain still tingled in her limbs. Her head felt like it was on fire, with sweat dripping down her temples.
“What in the blue blazes?” Houston shouted.
“Penny,” Tom yelled, putting a hand on her shoulder to keep her from leaping to her feet. She grabbed his hand and tore it away while pushing herself up, spinning as she did so she could face him. Her hands immediately groped for his neck and hair.
“Penny,” Tom yelled again, knocking her hands aside and shoving her back toward the chair. “It’s me, Tom.”
Penelope growled, her eyes darting around to take in the unfamiliar objects. This wasn’t the laboratory, there was hardly any light, and the two men in the cab with her weren’t from her nightmares.
“Penny,” Tom said softly. “It’s OK. It was just a dream.”
Penelope began to shake. Tom swooped in to grab her before she fell down. It
was
a dream, but it was one of the terrible ones that followed her into her waking thoughts. Her hands trembled. She looked at them, expecting the flesh to be seared because of the fire of the needle, but they were fine. There was nothing except dirty skin.
“That was some nightmare,” Houston said. “Scared the piss out of me, even.”
“She’s had bad dreams before, but nothing like this,” Tom told him. He eased her into the seat again and knelt beside her, looking into her tearing eyes. “Whatever happened today with the train scared up something new.”
Penelope shook her head, making the sign for
helicopter
.
“The helicopter dream?” Tom asked
, his eyes wide. “That was the helicopter dream?”
She nodded, then shook her head, sweeping her finger over the sign for helicopter.
“Before?” Tom asked. “The white room?”
She nodded emphatically, tears dribbling down her cheeks.
It had been a long time since the memories of the white room came so vividly. The past three days had them stirring like never before. Ever since that doctor said her numbers—
twenty-two
, she blurted at the party, her tone one of surprise. She recognized Penelope with that same fearful apprehension Penelope harbored.
“
Ken-yen-tee,” Penelope gasped. She had trouble forming words in her throat. Everything always came out at a whisper.
“What?” Tom asked, leaning closer and putting his ear next to her mouth. The train was too loud. It drowned out her soft voice.
“Ken-yen-tee,” she said again.
“Kenyan tea? I don’t understand.”
“Doc—tor,” she gasped, pushing Tom back to show him the sign of the helicopter again.
“Kennedy! On the helicopter?”
Penelope nodded, smiling weakly, but satisfied he understood. She lifted a leg to pull down her sock and show him the tattoo. He looked at it as she tapped her fingers over the numbers.
“At the party,” Tom said. “She recognized your numbers.”
Penelope nodded.
“Do you recognize her?”
Penelope nodded.
Houston throttled back the engine. Tom and Penelope stood up and looked out the front window. Penelope expected a wall of zombies in their path, but instead she saw only the white of snow flurries rushing sideways through the headlights. The
snowblower belched a column of white powder into the air, flinging it off to the right and away from the tracks. The snow being thrown arced slightly before falling over the trees and shrubs that bordered the tracks. The snow drifts they plowed through were already three or four feet high, making Penelope wonder how long she slept.
“Why are we stopping?” Tom asked.
“Shift change,” Houston said. “Go get soldier boy and have him bring me some coffee and one of those trays of Entenmann’s from the fridge. I’m going to take a leak.”
Houston led them into the belly of the engine compartment
, which was not only jarringly loud, but refreshingly warm. Houston stepped into the bathroom as Tom and Penelope passed him to get to the back of the engine. Tom pushed the rear door open and they stepped across to the coach car and pushed their way inside again.
“You guys up?” Tom asked. The room was mostly dark except for a light at the far end of the coach. Tom turned on a light to find the car empty.
“Where the hell did they go?” Tom asked Penelope.
The door at the opposite end slid open and Hank stepped into the coach, slipping one arm into his jacket
to put it on.
“Why’d we stop, kid?” Hank asked.
“Shift change. It’s Mason’s turn to keep Houston company.”
“That’s good. He’s been sleeping since we got on this rig.”
“Sleeping? Where?”
“The first class berths. Come on. I made a few snacks and put them in the fridge for later. There’s coffee, too.”
“Are you kidding?” Tom asked. “You’re sleeping with those…his models?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Hank asked, offended. “They’re goddamned biters, for crying out loud. Who the hell in their right mind would get near them?”
“That’s my point.”
“Their rooms are locked, kid.” Hank groused. He looked Tom up and down, shaking his head. “You should come get some sleep, too.”
“I think I’ll sleep fine in here.”
“Come on, kid. You can lock the door to
your berth. Nothing will get in. It’s fine.”
Tom reluctantly agreed, following Hank into the first class coach where Houston’s three zombies were kept. Hank pointed into the first berth where the zombie woman was standing next to the window, staring outside with one hand on the cold glass.
“I caught her sleeping in the bed earlier,” Hank said, pointing at the zombie woman. “Weird. I’ve never seen a biter as docile as these three. Even you,” Hank added, smiling at Penelope.
“Do you think they’re drugged?”
“Nah,” Hank dismissed, leading Tom and Penelope down the hallway. “Just really well-trained.”
Hank banged on one of the doors, calling out to Jones to wake up. The drape covering the window slid open to reveal Doctor O’Farrell. She let the drape go and opened the door. Inside, past the doctor, Penelope saw the soldier sitting at the edge of a bed, rubbing his fingers through his short hair.
“What?” O’Farrell asked, bleary eyed and surprised.
“It’s Mason’s shift up front,” Hank said.
“Bring coffee and a tray of Entenmann’s for Houston,” Tom told her.
“Sure,” she said absently
, then perked up. “There’s Entenmann’s?”
Hank led Tom to the next berth and opened its door. “You take that one, kid,” he said.
Penelope leaned around Tom to stare in. It was a narrow room like the others, with a couch and table. She didn’t see a bed like in the other berths.
“You can have the next one if you want, Kitty.”
Penelope shook her head.
“She’ll be fine with me.”
“Fine, fine,” Hank grumbled, walking away toward the back of the train. “Everyone’s got a girl but me.”
“There’s always Houston’s models,” Tom offered.
“Go to hell,” Hank replied jokingly. He went straight for the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Tom led Penelope into the berth and took off his jacket. He winced at the effort of getting it past his shoulder. Still in pain from falling on it a month ago while carrying Penelope
out of the horde in Midamerica. He traded his shoulder for preventing her falling on her head, cupping her close to his body as he slammed onto the tile.
She reached out to touch him, feeling the tingle in her belly and the warmth on her face that came with times like these when all she wanted to do was be close to him. Tom stepped past her and fiddled with a latch on the wall. The back of the couch fell forward and slid out,
revealing a mattress and sheets. It reminded her how little she knew of the world yet again.
“Take off your jacket,” Tom said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Penelope let Tom get the blankets and make their bed. He climbed in first so he could lie on his good side, then opened the blanket for Penelope to crawl in next to him. She gladly accepted, turning and relaxing so that she touched him from head to toe with the back of her body. He let the blanket fall over them and put his arm over her. She took his hand in hers and nuzzled closer to Tom, feeling the pressure of his body against hers. This was her favorite thing in life. This felt safe.
“I don’t know how I feel about you falling asleep again,” Tom whispered. “Try to dream ab
out something good.”
Penelope stilled. This was the only good thing in life.
When the train began to trundle ahead again, she stared wide-eyed toward the window, watching a dark world of gray obscurity pass by slowly. Outside it was cold and uncertain, but here it was warm and secure. She didn’t close her eyes.