The Book of a Few (15 page)

Lisa hummed to herself and said, “That’s sad, truly.”

We all worked together to get the body out and clean up the break room after Dana reminded us of today’s planned guests. Dr. Bella and company were supposed to show up sometime and we didn’t want to scare them off. We burned his body out in the far corner of the parking lot after figuring that the smoke wouldn’t attract any infected.

I suppose we did gain three firearms out of the whole ordeal. It will be nice not having to worry about security as much. While we aren’t a formidable force, we are a small band of armed men with the strong desire to live. Still, I know that everyone here has his own agenda. Branden wants to find his kid someday. Lisa, Taylor, and Will just seem to want to live, and I couldn’t tell you shit about what Dana wants. With a hodgepodge group like this, it’s only a matter of time before someone decides to put his or her own interests first.

An hour or so had passed, and everyone grew tired of waiting around. Card games took up a majority of that time, but I didn’t feel the desire to play. I did stand close enough to hear most of what everyone said during the games, however. They all told tales of their lives before the Silence and the battles they had fought to survive up until they had joined this little group.

Branden told his first, all known to me and previously stated in this logbook. He told the others how he was a husband and a father despite his young age. He explained to Will and Dana that before the Silence he had worked at this Warehouse with me and would occasionally see Taylor. Eventually he got around to describing what had happened to both his wife and child, and ended his story by expressing the desire to look around for his son tomorrow.

Next, Will told his story. I was interested in hearing a second time to be sure that no little details in his story had changed. He spoke of how his roommate and brother had died in the car seats in front of him. He was the only one buckled when infected rushed out onto the street to greet them. You can guess the rest. So he was left abandoned away from home—turns out he actually lives up north in Minneapolis—and wandered around a while. After some time, he found himself in the employ of the doctors at the hospital. One of the men he was assigned to work with came up with the idea of turning men, but it backfired when we came around.

Taylor had lost contact with his family, just as the rest of us had. He held tight in his apartment for a few days, but without expecting it, his father showed up to take him home. While the two of them were gathering up some of Taylor’s things, a frenzied gunman who had just seen his first infected ended up in a scuffle with his father. They both fell from the third floor deck. Taylor then set out to the police station, which was the closest source of help to him. They turned him down; they said their hands were full enough already and were unable to help him. Probably because of the newly emerging plague, I’d imagine. He was on his way home when one of Will’s men clubbed him in the back of his head.

I was surprised at how easy it was for Taylor to tell his story. He explained what Will had done to him like it was no big deal. When Will seemed remorseful after hearing the tale, Taylor laughed and said, “No, it’s not a big deal; I’d have done it, too.”

Taylor is by far the most generous and forgiving person I know. He is also probably the closest friend I have right now. We were great friends before the Silence, and I now notice that we don’t really talk as much. I should try to fix that.

I had been eagerly awaiting Dana’s turn and made sure to pay special attention to remember what was said.

“
Well, you probably aren’t gonna be surprised at all when I say this, but…” Dana said in a chipper tone. “Uh… my name’s Dana, and I am still alive.” He paused for a moment, letting it sink in. The others chuckled a bit, and yes, I may have grinned.

“
Uh… I was at home playing on my computer when I first ran into the dead. Well, I wasn’t playing—I was checking to see if the Internet was working again. My roommate came home and was coughing a lot, you know. I asked him how he was and he said he was fine. Then he went into the bathroom, preceded by another fit of coughs.” He paused a moment to think. “When he came back out, which was a long fucking time after he first went in there, he was one of them, simply put.”

I took a moment to ponder what he said. In mid-sentence, I interrupted, “Wait. Did you just say he changed in a few hours?”

“
Yeah…” Dana realized the point I was making based on his expression. “How did he…” Dana trailed off in his thoughts.

“
Yeah, I was gonna say, that doesn’t seem right,” Will added to the conversation. “How could he have become feral in a matter of hours? We’ve all been bitten and scratched, and in Taylor’s case it was
days
ago.”

“
I don’t know for sure,” Dana said, “but I think we will know in the near future.” He motioned toward the room where the body was. Let me add as well that the body wasn’t getting any fresher in the past few days.

Honking came from outside, almost as if on cue. The card players got up and went out to greet our expected guests and I followed behind. They weren’t in an ambulance like I had expected; it was a military-style truck. It looked big, heavy, and full. Five people emerged from the vehicle upon our waving them in, two of whom were easily recognizable: Thomson and Dr. Hillman. There was also three other men with them, one of whom I felt looked familiar, but I could not associate a name with the face.

Bella smiled her wonderful smile, and I waved to her. She then turned her attention to two armed guards that had come with her and told one of them to stay with the truck. The other looked a bit tattered, and by far appeared to be the worst equipped. Then the fifth person emerged from the rear end of the truck; a shorter Indian man who was dressed in a white gown much like Bella’s.

The strangers came up with Bella and introduced themselves to us. The ragbag soldier, Michael, shook hands with all of us first, greeting us all with a simple “It’s a pleasure.” Bella’s Indian counterpart is named Dr. Milaka, but I couldn’t really tell much of what he said because his accent is pretty thick.

I noticed as we were all introducing ourselves to one another that Thomson’s eyes were lingering out across the parking lot and off into the distance. Bruce’s body was still smoldering, and the wind carried the faint smell of cooking flesh to us. He seemed distraught and more preoccupied by his surroundings than the people around him.

“
We should get this over with,” he finally spoke, and his eyes met Bella’s. “Haven’t got a lot of light left in the day.”

He almost looked as though a sense of intense caution or fear had settled in him. Maybe the burning corpse outside wasn’t a very welcoming sight. I wondered if he was now concerned for the well-being of his men and the doctors, or afraid that this was an elaborate ruse. I understand his worry completely, as I, too, am often paranoid of being stabbed in the back by one of the men I surround myself with.

Indeed, the sun was slowly making its way down toward the horizon. We all agreed it best to let the doctors do their work and help out however we could. I’ve never had to, but I would imagine that traveling around in the night would be perilous. Maybe the infected sleep, but I still don’t see it being worth it. Last thing I would want is to get pinned down or lost somewhere in the dark.

The unnamed soldier, still standing by the truck, began pulling things out of the back end of the truck and placing them near our feet. A few small boxes, a duffle bag, a polished silver case of some sort, some plastic tarp, and poles that were presumably pieces of a tent. He also lugged out what looked like a small gas generator, or maybe a pump, and placed it on the ground next to the truck. He turned back to the truck and began pulling out long lengths of tubing. I had no clue at the time what it all was for and didn’t have much time to think about it.

“
So,” Bella said with an eager smile on her face, “lead the way.” She motioned with her hands. Impatient, I could tell, but she retained her ever-present sense of modesty and sweetness. Possibly out of respect for Thomson’s wishes to leave quickly. Thoughts ran through my mind regarding the nature of Bella and Thomson’s relationship. I hoped they were not romantically attached to one another. But it wasn’t my business. I was just curious.

We took the four of them inside and led them to the equipment room. We weaved through numerous reach lifts and fork trucks, and the closer we got to the body we were looking for, the stronger the smell got. The original plan was to get the body out the next day, but of course we had forgotten. By the time we went to move the body, two mornings later, we could already see visible changes in the body’s shape. Afraid of what was going on with it, and to touch it, we had no choice but to leave it until we could come up with a better plan. What was a softball-sized lump then had now grown to at least twice that size.

All nine of us cringed at the first hideous sight. The blisters were randomly spaced all around the body, but the biggest central mass was on the chest. It pulled the dead body’s shirt taught from the expansion of its own skin. It showed no signs of reanimation; it did not move as we talked and moved about it. Once again, Branden’s theory was proved wrong.

Bella looked it over, occasionally humming to herself as she thought. She asked for the fork truck that had been slightly rested on the deceased creature to be removed as carefully as possible. She stressed the importance of not disturbing it too much, as it might ruin the experiment.

I watched, trembling, as Branden climbed onto the vehicle and the forks slowly lifted into the air. Branden’s mission was successful, though, and he parked the fork truck elsewhere. I examined the body, and the only thoughts that ran through my mind were of my nauseating curiosity. I don’t know why, but I felt intrigued to pick this abominated man apart and examine him myself. I was, and still am, tired of going through every day wondering how it all started. But, of course, I knew that this one zombie would not hold all of the answers.

“
Dr. Milaka,” Bella said, “would you go and get the bio tent and suits, and have Zach help carry in the surgery equipment and the air tubing?”

Dr. Milaka nodded.

“
It’ll only take an hour or two,” she told us, and we told her that it was fine. It didn’t matter to us when the work was finished.

Lisa approached us and shook hands with Bella. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Then she turned to me and said with a lighthearted smirk, “Finally getting rid of it, huh?”

I smiled back. “Yeah.”

“
Thank God.” Lisa looked over at the body and shuddered. “Gross. I have no interest in watching this, so I’ll leave you to it. I have to feed Joey again anyway.”

“
All right,” I said.

“
It was nice to meet you, Lisa,” Bella said.

Lisa looked back over her shoulder as she walked away and said, “You, too, Dr. Hillman. Take care.”

Dr. Milaka returned with as much as he could carry—the tarp, tent poles, duffle bag, and metallic suitcase. The doctors, along with Thomson and Michael’s help, started setting up the quarantine tent. It wasn’t very big so it didn’t take long, but one thing I did notice was that it wasn’t wrapped in any sanitary plastic like I had expected, which led me to wonder if the tent had been used before. I didn’t ask, even though it bothered me. I would think that it would need to be clean to prevent any contamination of the corpse during whatever experiments they had planned to do.

The tent was lifted off the ground and placed back down over the body, as there wasn’t a bottom to it. This specific tent couldn’t have been a legitimate containment tent, could it? However, the air tubing assembly on the tent did make it seem a little more realistic. I remember thinking how it seemed a little shady. Like these people were
suspiciously
under-equipped for their jobs. I thought maybe this whole thing—the tent, the guards, Thomson and Bella—was just a facade. Maybe they were a group of people that would lie about who they are to get into houses without a fight. Then, by surprise, they would take what they needed to survive.

The soldier that had been standing outside with the truck walked into the equipment room. He spun his head around a few times trying to spot us. When he did, he dropped off what he had and made his way back to the truck. Bella and Dr. Milaka fumbled about through their things, sorting and organizing their equipment while trying to decide what they would need most.