A hunter processed
Chapter 2
Winter was slow coming and warm this year. January had only a few flurries of snow, all melted by midday. Normally, this would have meant a drought year, but with so little demand on nature's resources it probably wouldn't matter for the survivors. There was no shortage of food and medicine either. The compound, hundreds of miles from towns, was self-sustaining with a good water filtration system, micro-hydroelectric generators and a hobby-garden in a greenhouse, still close enough for raids and far enough to outrun any followers. Unlicensed and unchecked deer and moose hunting was a favorite pastime for the security guards, before life became a Romero film, on what they deemed a dead-end cozy post babysitting scientists that pissed off their superiors enough to earn a doozy of a commute for a mocha latte.
The natives, as the people who lived there before the infection hit were called, were used to having several tasks. The cook doubled as the groundskeeper and the dentist doubled as the barber. The generalist doctor became a sort of atheist priest-slash-confidant, listening to everyone's worries and dreams as he gave them routine checkups and treated their minor wounds.
The infection hit the compound a week late and probably wouldn't have reached it at all if a small caravan hadn't decided to visit the nearest town for news and supplies after they had been cutoff from the rest of the world. Of the ten that had left, four made it back, two of which had been bitten. If the drive had taken half-an-hour longer then maybe three-fourths of the staff wouldn't have succumb to the bloody nightmare that the cities were enmeshed in.
As luck would have it, the quarantine measures in the labs could detect whatever virulent disease was spreading on the upper levels and mistaking the source of illness as originating from the inner levels sealed them off trapping Dr. Reilly May and a handful of her assistants and colleagues inside. The security protocol required outside access to override the quarantine; the only living above too enraged and mindless to enter a code. After a time, their radio picked up faint transmissions of a military convoy on the move, telling survivors that ECHO was no longer secure and to find them along the highway until they relocated.
All of that happenstance led to this moment, a lone hunter too persistent for his own good, wrenched from a simple life of defying gravity and pursuing fresh meat. A few civilians, more daring than most, waited in the inner courtyard to see the smaller-than-expected and bound creature whose shrieks still ring out in repressed dreams.
"It's just the one? They work in packs, I've seen them!" A tall man, eyes wide in paranoia, hand rubbing his side as he kept twisting his head to the dark forest.
"You soldiers do your job and keep a lookout." A muscular woman, tight cornrows and a tighter grimace lined her face.
"Dr. May, you wring that cure out of it, quickly now. My boy, John, he's locked in his room and waiting for me. I can't let him go hungry much longer. So hurry on now. Oh, he must be skin and bones by now. Sweet little thing, could never say no to a treat…" A stereotypical housekeeper, skin loose from lost weight, a picture tattered at her hands.
Reilly waved and assured she'd get it done, no worries. Jameson walked by, the pleas falling on deaf ears, his cargo squirming at the calls. Manymanymany prey. Mineminemine. Escape, kill, eat. Mineminemine. Kill smallstrongbeast, kill womantrap, escapefleerun soon.
Walking ahead, Reilly kept glancing back assuring herself that Jameson hadn't reconsidered and snapped the infected's neck. She saw the flash of a gun sight from the nearest tower, the soldiers surrounding Jameson and his catch itching at their triggers. A powder keg, just a wrong move away from starting back at square one. As she reached the lab entrance she paused. "Jameson, the quarantine protocol hasn't been completely turned off, so don't be alarmed and overreact now. That goes for the rest of you."
The officer sighed heavily, tired of her constant unnecessary sermonizing. Of course he would know, they used it on all the new survivors with the pretense of giving them actual medical aid. He had no idea how its air filters and biometric sensors could recognize a disease that seemed to spill out of nightmare hitting nearly everywhere at once. Nonetheless, it did, saving the soldiers from killing the innocently sick with a cold and preventing an outbreak from wreaking havoc amongst the loosely tied group. He has had to deal with deserting soldiers and thieving civilians that thought that an AVC, a crate of ammo and a year's worth of MREs were public property. A big enough fuck-up and it'll fraction, self-preservation overriding social programming.
Three soldiers strode ahead, poised in the corridor and waiting. Reilly stood off to the side by a console, bottom lip worried by straight teeth. As expected a blazon blared, an eerily calm female voice warning of what measures are being taken. The old hands assuring the newcomers that it's a good thing that the system still works. It was all bark and no bite, locking mechanisms and gas decontaminators disabled. The hunter was terrified the most, almost pained by the clanging noise. Once Jameson was down the corridor, through two inner chambers, and far from the entrance Reilly entered the code, its confidentiality so lost as to be taped over the console for any grunt to type in.
As she reached the staging area for the infected's admittance into the world of medical trial and error, she was relieved to see it safely strapped to an examination table, arms and legs spread out x-shaped. The only other researcher there was a pudgy balding man named Benstein whom specialized in virology. He was in a full-hazmat suit, breath fogging his face shield, sweat dripping off his brow unbothered by a heavily gloved hand.
"Oh, come on, Ben. We talked about this already. It's not airborne." She made a move to lift his hood, but he dodged away and grasped her hands in his. Ever since that fateful day that a compound designed to save the world from their experiments saved them instead, he's been obsessed with isolation and decontamination. Spending his days alone in his lab, its security codes his and his alone.
"Ah, ah, ah! Something about the infection must be airborne, it spreads too quickly. I saw no blood, sweat, spit or semen touch those sensors and it went off regardless." He'd done a stint as a professor and kept that educational tone, reproachful and engaging at once. "You may wish to risk your health down the road, Dr. Reilly May, but I plan on living to the fullest without a single capsid ever setting shop in me. Come now, we have work to do."
He took his samples, blood, hair, skin scrapes, under-nail scrapes and a swab at the eyes, at the nose, at the mouth and the ears. "When you get the chance send me samples of urine and fecal matter. We've already know that the gonads in regular infected are atrophied, but re-check on this one. And get him cleaned up, will you? I'll probably have to redo these samples, I've no doubt there's some cross-contamination with whatever died at those claws."
He toddled off, tray in hand which almost tumbled as he jolted in realization. "Oh, how could I forget? You must do a spinal tap. I know, I know. I'm not getting brain matter until all other options have been exhausted, but losing a little cerebrospinal fluid never hurt anyone. Maybe even a tiny biopsy of his liver, if you ever feel generous. It regrows. " He turned away again and gave one last playful jab before heading to his lab. "Have fun playing psychologist or animal behaviorist depending on this guy's disposition. It might take me a bit to break down the components of this virus before you can get to your own work."
After he left, Jameson couldn't help a small twist of his lips. He hardly ever saw Dr. Benstein and most of the camp didn't even know of him. The elderly man was infinitely more agreeable than Dr. May and Jameson appreciated the man's candor which put her in her place. The provisional population may think May as their personal savior, but her work needs a starting point, relying on data she couldn't seek out swiftly enough on her own. It nagged at him that credit wasn't given where it was due, but it would only complicate matters to disclose it. "Let's get this mutt washed up and call one of the real doctors over here."
"We're not doing any invasive surgery until he recovers from all the wounds you've given him." Wearing protective gloves, safety goggles and mask, she picked up a slim set of scissors and leaned over her stray, cutting at the fabric at his chest. His adam's apple bobbed rapidly as she exposed his chest, hyperventilation shaking his frame. She quickly removed her lab coat and laid it over his face, calming the hunter down, yet still it pulled at the restraints. The skin was a sickly light brown covered in old scars and blossoming bruises. She noticed gunshot wounds, completely healed over, some of which held a hard metal fragment encased within. "Advanced healing capabilities, I can't tell with certainty if his ribs have been broken before, but they seem oddly set. I'll have Dr. Stacey give me a definite answer."
"Looks like it was a gangbanger before turning into a zombie." Jameson eyed a simplistic design of intersecting loops tattooed in stark black on the creature's right arm.
Reilly stopped her examinations. "Or a surfer, skater, college student, rock enthusiast or none of the above. I'd thought that you'd be young enough to not be prejudiced against a little ink."
"I'd thought that you'd be old enough to know that there's a correlation between permanent disfigurement and unlawful behavior." One patronizing insult for another barely masked as opinions.
She lightly placed the scissors on the surgical tray and searched along the hunter's hips, her hands finding a dented lump. "Luckily for us, he still has his wallet with him. So let's see what kind of man our patient was, hmm?" A gunshot had ripped through a meaty thigh, the bullet lodged in leathery folds. As she placed the blood encrusted wallet on the tray, she delicately pried it open, the bullet now loose ringing sharply as it contacted other metal. A couple of twenty dollar bills, the remains of what seems like a condom, family pictures too deteriorated to make out and a college id. "He must not have known how to drive. All I can make out is Peter and a couple of numbers of his student id. It's sad really, no last name or birthday. For now, at least."
"Can we get on with this?" Jameson could tell that she was fawning over the mutt. A disgusting enough prospect if she did it out of motherly concern, unthinkable if she had deeper intentions. His bile rose at the mere glimpse of it. She huffed at him, all self-righteous indignation at the plainest suggestion of inefficiency.
She picked up the scissors again and spoke softly before she began cutting. "Don't worry, Peter. I know you don't like being unclothed, but this is all for your own good."
"For God's sake, do you not know what you're dealing with here? It can't understand you." A man is still being treated for injuries caused by this zombie and she wants to coddle him. She was a professional for life, no family to lose, her only friends safe and sound within the confines of this base. She knew so little about the outside world.
"And if you're wrong? If he can understand us and is just compelled by his disease to be vicious? What then? I won't traumatize him more by treating him like an animal." Jameson pigheaded refusal to see past his prejudiced and limited views was straining her patience.
"If that monster knows what we are saying when it has us pinned down and begging for help, then it's a lot worse than I thought it could be." He couldn't help the snarl in his voice, her willful blindness just another reminder of how society could crumble so easily.
"Look at the big picture here. Small-minded revenge will get us nowhere. We have to be above that." There are so many possibilities he wouldn't even deign to consider. Like so many military men, he'd rather shoot first and ask questions later, never stopping to think that a corpse can't answer questions.
"Small-minded? As if your lofty ideals are going to keep the human race alive. Thinking of those things as still human is what has gotten a lot of good people killed." If it hadn't been a direct order from the acting President of the United States, he'd lock her up and neutralize the hunter. They should be amassing their forces and go on the offensive. The dead stay dead and for bad or good most of the cities were mass graves.
"Sir! Doc-doctor! The infected…" There were only three soldiers in the room, two by the door and one by the table. This one leveraged his weapon against the hunter's chest as it thrashed back and forth, the straps at its limbs loosening.
Womantrap ripping cover. Eat me. Smallstrongbeast close, angry. Eat me. Nonononono. Fight for me. Rip me, kill me, eat me.
"Dammit, look at what you did! Peter, PETER, listen to me. It's going to be okay. Just calm down." She lifted the lab coat and placed a soothing hand over his forehead, leaning forward, willing him to meet her eyes. The renewed terror in his voice and eyes broke her heart.
"You know what has quieted this mutt down. This." Jameson reached over Reilly and pushed her aside, noting the soulless rage brimming in those fiery pits that used to be eyes. He gripped the rumbling neck and squeezed.
"Don't do that! Don't you dare lay another hand on him. As long as I'm in charge of this base…" She pushed him back and brandished the scissors near his face. He was going to damn them all and ruin this godsend.
Jameson caught her at the corner of his eye and quickly snagged the scissors out of her hand, expression tired and disinterested at the needless drama. "You're not in charge here. We are. Joint-fucking-custody. When it comes to scientific mumbo-jumbo, you get your say. All security and military issues go through me. And this hunter right here. Biggest fucking weak-point in our defenses."
"You have your way now, remember? Nobody comes in or out of this lab without an armed escort and must be approved by you." She moved to Peter's side and stroked along his hairline, offering a bit of comfort in a cruel world. "Everybody locked in here, only people with the key are you and an undisclosed person in case something happens to you. Do you recall this at all? All of your little worries have been addressed, Jameson." Reilly glared daggers at him, keen on seeing the man knocked down a peg. "Don't overdo it with this overcompensating macho crap."
The same hand holding the scissors jabbed a decisive finger in her face. "One wrong move, a single preventable bite, a successful pounce and I'll give Dr. Benstein all of the gray matter he could ever want."
"That is perfectly understood, no need to repeat yourself ad naseum." She softened up, knowing she won this match and only had to give him an out to get on with her task. "Now let me get back to processing Peter so we can get him looking decent." She plucked the scissors from his paw of a hand and started cutting at Peter's jeans, his slight trembling barely registering.
These were the some of the leaders of the unknowing masses of survivors. Decisions made in heated tantrums, the ebb and flow of history at the mercy of their whims. And this was the most secure, stabilized and peaceful of camps left on the northern continent. The balance perilously maintained between a woman's fragile hope and a man's crackling passion.