The first time they let Joel observe a procedure, he's five minutes in before he wonders why he ever fought for the privilege. He tamps down immediately on the selfish impulse. If this is rough on him, it's nothing to how Ellie's feeling.
She's lying on her stomach in the refurbished operating room, a hairnet over her head, her body completely covered by a blue drape except for a soft-ball sized hole cut out over her tailbone. Joel is dressed the same as Anderson and the two nurses - scrubs, cap, mask. He's sitting on a stool near her head because the nurses insisted he not stand. They didn't seem moved when he pointed out that he wasn't exactly squeamish.
As he squeezes Ellie's hand, though, he starts to think that maybe Nurse Mia knows what she's talking about. The gleaming tray behind him holds a disturbing number of steel syringes and very large needles. He tries not to look at those. The air is close and smells of alcohol - real rubbing alcohol, not the hooch they usually use to scrub out wounds on the road. The snap of latex as Dr. Anderson puts on his gloves is oddly alien - familiar from emergency rooms a lifetime ago, on the few occasions when he'd show up with a broken wrist or a nail through his calf or a colicky baby on his shoulder, but strange and foreign to this new world.
"You doin' okay, kiddo?" he asks, even though they haven't even poked her yet.
"Peachy," she says, her voice a little slurred from the light sedative they gave her. She squeezes his hand a little tighter.
Joel looks back at Anderson. "Tell me again why you couldn't just do this like the bone marrow biopsy?"
Jerry nods to a nurse, who starts drawing up lidocaine. "We need more for a donation," he explains, "And it has to be completely uncontaminated. It's a routine procedure. People used to donate all the time before the outbreak. For leukemia patients and so forth."
Joel grunts and looks away.
"It'll be worth it, right?" Ellie says. "My bone marrow. You can cure somebody with it. Or, make them immune, at least."
"It could lead to a breakthrough."
"That means that they'll try," Joel says in a tone of caution that falls on deaf ears.
"You'll feel a pinch now, Ellie," the nurse says. With steady hands, the woman injects the lidocaine not just once but at several sites all around Ellie's back.
Ellie groans. "Ow . . . ow, fuck that hurts. Teeny tiny needles shouldn't hurt that much."
Joel pats her forearm. "Yeah, lidocaine sucks. I remember . . ." He pauses, but he needs something to take her mind off things, so he blabbers out the first story that comes to mind. "I remember this one time . . . must've been at least twenty-five years ago, I sliced my arm open on a circular saw and had to get it stitched up. By the time they were halfway through numbing me up, I was practically begging the doc to just stop and stitch it already."
Ellie's eyes are closed, but she flinches as a nurse swabs her back with iodine. "They gave you lidocaine just for a cut?"
"We had plenty of it, back then. It was supposed to be nicer than just sewing wounds up. I disagreed, after that."
Anderson adjusts his gloves and picks up one of the larger needles. "Okay, Ellie, you should just feel some pressure."
Joel looks away, focusing on her face, where her deeply furrowed brow suggests its more than just pressure. "What's . . . what's a circular saw?"
He forces a smile. "It's a power tool. Think of a saw . . . but the blade is a disk that spins. There's still some around. This place probably has a couple for maintenance."
"I think I saw . . . something like that in a comic, once. But, it was a guy's hands. His whole hands were just these spinning saw blades."
"That don't sound practical."
"It wasn't."
"Okay, that's a good sample." Joel glances back at Dr. Anderson and immediately regrets it when he sees the thick red fluid filling the syringe. He's not done, though. He sets the syringe aside and picks up another, just as large. Joel hurries to find something to say.
"Well I . . . I had enough trouble just with the real thing. As if it wasn't bad enough I gashed myself, I had to fall out of the damn tree doing it."
Ellie laughs, but the sound trails off into a groan as Jerry inserts the needle. "Why the fuck were you up a tree with a power saw?"
"Makin' a tree house."
"A tree house . . . Imma be honest, I kinda thought those were made up for books."
"Oh, they were real. Kids loved 'em."
Anderson seems to be having a little more trouble getting his sample this time. He grinds the needle back and forth until Ellie whimpers.
"Of course, ours wasn't much of a house. More of a platform with a couple of rickety walls."
Ellie is wincing but trying to smile at the same time. "But, let me guess, she totally loved it and that made it all worth it, plus you ended up with a bitching scar to impress all the ladies."
"Something like that."
"There we go," Anderson says at last. He pulls the needle out, remind Joel one more time of just how long it is, and snaps his gloves off. "We got what we need. You were a trooper, Ellie."
The shields of bravado are coming up, stronger than before. She smirks. "Thanks, do I get a cool hat?"
Joel can't quite stop himself from leaning down to drop a quick kiss to her hairnet. She looks up at him with a question in her eyes. He makes himself smile. "Proud of you, kiddo."
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A few days later, Joel begs off the morning scavenging run so he can be present for the first stage of the test. He waits with Jerry and Marlene behind a one-way mirror looking into an operating room that's been fortified like a prison. Anderson is keyed up, talking about destiny and huge leaps forward, but all Joel can do is watch the test subject - a man in his forties who'd apparently volunteered in hopes of becoming the second immune person in the world. He's pale and a little weak - according to Anderson's only-slightly-condescending briefing, they'd had to irradiate the volunteer to kill off his own bone marrow before transplanting Ellie's. All the same, he manages a smile and a thumbs up as a pair of orderlies tie him into a chair with thick nylon straps.
"Are you sure this is gonna work?" Joel asks quietly.
Anderson gives him a look. "I'm not sure of anything. It's all theoretical. But, this is the best chance we've had in a long time. We basically gave him Ellie's immune system."
"But," Joel says simply.
Jerry nods, his face tempered with a hint of apprehension. "But. The only way to know if he's immune is to try to infect him."
"And if it fails?" Marlene asks. Her face is tight with tension.
"If it fails, then we've still ruled out a lot of the mechanisms by which Ellie's immunity might work. We can narrow down our list, regroup, and try something else."
Joel's lip twists. "Does that fellow know he might be dying so you can narrow down your list?"
"He does, actually."
Joel grinds his teeth for a moment, then takes a breath. "And, what if it works?"
Jerry's eyebrows shoot up. "Beg pardon?"
"What if he's immune? Ellie just spent two days flat on her stomach 'cause it hurt too much to sit. She can't do this for everyone in the world."
Anderson waves a hand. "Of course not. It'd never be a feasible large-scale treatment option. But, we could start isolating which part of her immune system grants her immunity. And we'd have another test subject - this one an adult male who could give us a lot more in terms of pure sampling opportunities."
The cold way that Anderson talks about blood and tissue never fails to send a chill down Joel's spine, but he shakes it off. Better that this poor bastard be on the receiving end of the big needles. At least he fucking volunteered.
One of the orderlies pulls out a gas mask attached to long, plastic tubing, and nearly everyone flinches. The subject's face is completely bloodless as the orderly presses it against his face and pulls the straps tight. He nods once
There's a control panel in front of Anderson with just a couple of buttons. For all his talk of destiny, his hands are shaking when the time comes. He presses his lips together, firms his jaw, and presses the largest button.
A hiss reaches their ears, sounding loud in the pin drop silence. In an oxygen tank in the far corner of the room, a canister is opening. The orderlies both put on standard gas masks, in case of any mishaps.
The clear plastic tubing attached to the subject's mask suddenly clouds with the brown haze of spores. They whistle down the long tubing and fill the mask in an instant, thick enough to almost obscure the subject's face. The reaction is immediate. The man doubles over, wracked by violent coughing. He's almost convulsing against the straps that hold him. One of the orderlies cautiously puts a hand on his shoulder.
After thirty seconds that feel like hours, a timer beeps on Anderson's control pad and he jabs another button. Suction kicks in with a gentle brr and after a few moments, the face shield of the mask is clear again, the spores filtered away. The coughing continues, a desperate choking sound.
The orderlies don thick rubber gloves and carefully remove the mask. Both it and its victim's face are carefully sluiced with a solution to deactivate the remaining spores. One of the orderlies steadies the man while another holds a scanner to his ear. It beeps softly and they all stare at the green glow of a positive.
"Doesn't necessarily mean anything," Marlene says after a long pause, "Ellie reads as positive too."
The man is still coughing, his chest heaving as he tries to draw breath. Joel's lips tighten. "Ellie's never coughed like that."
Jerry clears his throat. "Well, there's nothing to do now but wait. We'll keep monitoring him. This could work, but we knew it wasn't going to be easy."
Joel glances up at a clock on the wall and sighs. "I'm due for four hours on the wall. I'll check back in after." He turns to go but pauses at the door. "Don't mention this to Ellie. At least not 'til we know, one way or the other."
"Yeah," Marlene says, distracted, "Of course."
Shaking his head, Joel leaves them to their watch and goes to start his own.
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After four hours of baking in the sun and watching tumbleweeds roll past, Joel would just about kill for something cold to drink. Still, he passes the mess hall without pausing, trudges up two flights of stairs, and nods his way past the guards to get back to the observation room. Marlene and Jerry are still there. Someone's brought a folding metal chair, and Jerry is sitting, shoulders slumped, head dipping almost to his chest as he studies his own palms. Marlene is leaning against the glass, one arm over her head. She straightens when she sees Joel and shakes her head.
Knowing what he's going to find, Joel steps into the room and looks through the glass. He sighs. "Shit."
In the operating theater, the subject is still strapped to the chair, though his arms are bleeding in a dozen places from the restraints. He's soaked in sweat and trembling with fever. The orderlies are gone - too dangerous for them to stay. The man keeps trying to speak, but his voice comes out slurred and garbled, threaded through with pain and rage. It's classic early-stage infection, but he's not quite senseless yet, which is the real horror of it.
"That didn't take long," Joel says quietly.
Jerry is shaking his head, his face grim but composed. "Infection by a massive dose of inhaled spores is the fastest route. That's why we chose it."
"And why aren't you doing anything?"
The heel of Marlene's hand thuds off the glass. "What is there to do? It didn't work."
Joel stares at them and shakes his head. He pulls out his revolver, checks the cylinder, and turns toward the door.
"Wait, what are you doing?" Jerry's voice is suddenly alarmed. He springs to his feet, his malaise forgotten.
"He's turning."
"Yes, we know."
"Well, somebody's gotta put him out of his misery."
"Joel, no." Marlene grabs his arm. "It's an experiment. We have to let it play out."
"Oh, like you've never watched somebody turn before? We need to fucking study it?"
"We need to study how he turns," Anderson is saying, "We need to time the stages, take some serology samples along the way, and determine whether Ellie's bone marrow altered the process at all. Afterwards, autopsy will give us a lot more information. But, we can't do that if you splatter my test subject's brains all over the wall."
"Joel," Marlene says, soft and urgent, "His name was Ryan. He signed up for this. He knew what it might mean."
Joel lets out a sigh that's more of a growl. But, he holsters his gun. Anderson is shaking his head in that disgusted way he gets when it's clear he thinks Joel is a fucking savage, but he lets it go.
"We have enough bone marrow left for one more donation. Ellie was exposed transdermally - we could try that, see if the results are any different."
"You want to try the exact same thing again?"
"The immune response in the subcutaneous tissues works completely differently than it does in the lungs. It might be enough to modulate the fungus's life cycle or even induce a mutation . . . Y'know what? Take a year of immunology and then maybe I could fill you in on the details."
That gets Joel's back up, as it's doubtless intended to. Marlene discreetly steps between them, but Joel limits his response to narrowed eyes and a dark tone of voice. "All I'm saying is that you seem pretty damn eager to move on to the next test subject before this one's even cold."
Marlene spins on him, her temper flaring. "Jesus, Joel, you are not this fucking naive! Did you think it was gonna be simple? That we'd just wave our wand and, poof, cure's made? This is the culmination of twenty years of research by hundreds of scientists, and all but one of them is dead. You want us to cry because it didn't work out for Ryan? Do you honestly think this is the first time we've lost a subject?"
"And that doesn't give you even a second's pause? How many more, Marlene? How many are you gonna put in that damn chair?"
"As many as we fucking have to!"
Joel's head snaps up. He's never heard Anderson curse like that before.
The doctor's fists are balled and his eyes are hard. "We're dying. As a species. Do you get that? Humanity is dying, and with it every last human, whether they're bit or not. And we can either lie down and take it or we can try and fight. There's no study design, no ethics committee that's going to get us through this with our hands clean - we tried all that. Cordyceps doesn't infect mice or rats or dogs or pigs or monkeys - it only wants us. So, yeah, we make some tough choices, but what we're choosing is survival. Which still beats the hell out of the alternative."
Joel's temper ebbs during Anderson's tirade, but it doesn't leave acceptance in its wake. He suddenly feels very old and very tired. "How much do you practice that little speech?" he says quietly.
Jerry looks away. "Get the fuck out of my lab, Joel."
He nods and turns for the door but pauses with his hand on the knob. "There's one more thing." He turns to face them. "Somebody's gonna have to tell Ellie it didn't work. Any volunteers?"
Marlene bows her head, her shoulders slumping in defeat. Jerry glares at the glass.
"Yeah. Didn't think so."
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She's lying on her belly with a book in her hands, but she looks up when Joel enters the clean room.
"Hey, kiddo."
She rolls over, wincing a little, and slides a comic between the pages of the novel to act as a bookmark. "Hey."
"That one of the books Abby got you?"
"Yeah." She shows him the cover.
"Parable of the Sower . . ." Something about that niggles his memory of a long-ago Sunday School. He arches an eyebrow. "That a church book?"
Ellie laughs. "No. It's sci-fi. Or something like that, at least. It's weird and really dark, but I kind of dig it?"
He sits on the edge of the bed. "What's it about?"
She turns it over in her hands. "So, I guess it came out before the outbreak 'cause there's no infected, but the world kind of sucks anyway. Everything's drying out and people are starving. And there's this girl . . . she figures out that the only way humans are gonna survive is if they go to the stars. Of course, her home gets destroyed by hunters because everything sucks, but she forms this . . . group. She finds all these people that believe in her, and they're trying to get up north where it's safe. Where, I guess they're gonna build the spaceships or something."
Joel grunts. "Well, people always did like end of the world stories."
She sets the book aside and gives him a look that says that she knows he's stalling. She waits for him to say what he's come to say.
He folds his hands and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Ellie . . . the parable of the sower - the original one, from the Bible? It was about how not everybody makes it in the end. But, you just gotta . . . keep pushing forward, keep planting seeds, and focus on the ones that do."
Her face falls. "What are you saying?" she says, though it's clear that she already knows.
"The . . . the transplant didn't work. The test subject . . . he turned."
Breath punches out of her. She curls in on herself, one hand subconsciously reaching back to rub at her tailbone.
"Now, Anderson says he still learned something from the test. They're gonna keep trying, and we just gotta be patient. This is a roadblock, okay? It's not the end of the line."
She nods and swallows hard. Her face is strained, but her eyes are dry.
"Ellie? You okay?"
"Yeah," she says, quick and breathy.
"Ellie . . ."
"I'm okay. Keep moving forward, right? We knew it wasn't gonna be easy."
But, there's something a little older and a little bleaker in her face, and they both know this isn't the last time they'll have this conversation.
tbc