Ellis managed to sleep through the radio calls, and the flare gun fire. But he couldn't sleep through the voice that whispered in his ear. "Elllissss, your driving sucks."
Ellis sat bolt upright in bed, blinked in surprise as the figure in the pink track suit came into focus and hollared in delight. "ZOEEEEEEYYYYY!" With a giddiness that only a jockey could match he swung Zoey around in the cramped confines of the motor boat's cabin.
Only his cry of joy startled Rochelle out of bed. Rochelle yelped, her head knocking into Zoey's back and suddenly the three of them were on the floor of the boat in a heap. Rochelle scrambled up, yelling at Ellis about startling her. But he was too ecstatic to pay attention to her. "I missed you soooooooo!" Ellis hauled Zoey into a noogie, and then she wiggled out of his arm and did the same. "woah you noogie hard!"
"Chalk it up to Bill's teachings and tons and tons of running and swinging melee weapons around." Zoey beamed. "i start swinging a sword and even Francis ducks!"
"um... hang on... you forgot something... that was your friend in the building near the lift right? Old guy?"
Zoey blinked. "yeah why." Her face fell, like she was remembering something very far away.
Ellis dug around in his pockets and pulled out a worn slightly damp very rumpled roll of cloth. He straightened Bill's hat out, took the lighter out of the inside, and put the hat on Zoey's head before offering the Zippo. Zoey held out her hands, eyes tearing up as he gingerly set it into her cupped palms. "Th... thank you..." She hugged Ellis in a tight squeeze, deeply felt rather than the excitement of finding each other again. "He kept us alive... I wouldn't have ever met you if he hadn't saved us."
"I saw the record you left at Fort Colony. Three tanks?"
"Yeah..." Zoey wiped her eyes. "I keep seeing his face as he looked back at us... just once... then he jumped right in. Francis almost went after him. But... I couldn't lose him too. We're like family now, the lot of us. I lost a foster father, couldn't lose a foster brother too. The last thing he said to us was 'take care of each other.'"
Ellis patted Zoey on the shoulder. "So how'd Coach find you guys?"
"The radio." Zoey chuckled. "I'd forgotten Lovelace had it installed. Said whatever data we could gather on what was going on out there was payment enough."
"oh yeah the guy named after the computer guy. The radio operator."
"Girl, Ada Lovelace was a girl, Adam Lovelace is the radio operator. Anyway, we got something for our farm on this island called Monseratt. We were poking around trying to find anything else we could scavenge." Zoey chuckled. "Baby chicks, and a dog that looks like he's immune too. He's got a broken leg though."
"Why didn't you tell us? About the carriers... I got the shit scared outta me when Doc Mercer did her field test!" Ellis protested.
"Not the best way to start a conversation. 'hey complete stranger I'm Zoey and we might all be carrying the virus and not feeling it.' Thats a sure way to get a bullet to the brain."
"I guess..."
"So how long did you stay at Colony?" Zoey asked curiously.
"A couple of months. We made bank trading muscle for stuff. Learned some interesting things too and I got to fix up an APC. Never done that before!" Ellis beamed. "It was like driving Gibbs Jr.'s stock car. As a mechanic I learned a ton of stuff just driving it, only here it was helping to take the damn thing apart and put the parts in a broken one to make it work again. They're actually filing auto parts by year model and condition in that shop!"
As they walked out to have a look at the One 4 All and Ellis hopefully looked around for the dog they passed Rochelle and Francis binding the two boats together. Rochelle accidentally reached for the same rope that Francis did, and when their hands touched she blushed slightly. "Um... I don't really hate your vest..."
"... I know you were just trying to impress me with how much you hate stuff! With a shot like that though you don't have to, you got eagle eyes!"
Ellis smiled and followed Zoey to a plastic sterilite box inside the One 4 All. She opened the top and the two peered in to see a ton of little yellow balls of fluff with beaks peering up at them. "No momma?"
"We ate her for supper, hadn't had meat in so long. Fish and coconuts will only keep you going for so many nights before you need something heavier. So... that blood serum of Mercers... did it work? Did they find anything new about the infected?"
"Well..."
~Flashback~
The song and the crying woke Ellis up. "hng... witch..." he groaned rolling over. He hauled himself out of bed, more on instinct than anything else. "Stuffed yerself on Lentils and canned chicken and now you can't wake up... fuck meeeeee." He walked to the front "porch" of the half finished apartment they'd been settled into.
And when a second voice responded to the witch Ellis started rubbing his eyes. Down in the courtyard Mason was staring at the sky with his head all the way back, ululating along with the witch's haunting croon. "oooOOOOoooOOOoooOOooOOooOOoooo" and then Mason. "oooOOOoooOOOoooOOooooOOO..." The five year old was note on with the imitation but this late it just irritated Ellis more.
Ellis groaned and started rubbing his cheeks now. He shuffled along the walkway constituting the "porch" for the rest of the quarters until he came to a divide. He shambled up onto the guards walkway from there and stopped to ask a cluster of the men on watch. "What's going on?"
"Third night the witches have been singing... snickerdoodle? Fresh from the oven." He offered Ellis a cookie.
Ellis blinked sleepily, then took it. "Three whole nights? Are you sure its the same witch? there's only one down there."
"Killed the last one when we couldn't take it anymore. I swear Mason could have brought on a hoard the way he screamed. Not doing that again."
"She's leaning on the wall, what the hell is she here for?" The man with the cookies leaned over the side. A chunk fell off one. "SHIT!"
Ellis grabbed a pistol from the foldable table the men had been gathered around and peered over the railing through the barbed wire and curved slats. The witch's nose twitched and she stopped. Sniff... sniff... sniff... the zombie creeled slightly like she was getting ready to startle. "Crap." Ellis scrambled to check the pistol's magazine and take the safety off. But the Witch leaned over the piece of cookie on the ground, sniffing and bringing her face really close down. "Is she... smelling that cookie piece?"
"Seriously?" One of the other men laughed. "hey George your grandmas snickerdoodles are so powerful they're witch bait!"
"Shut up..." The older of the quartet hissed. The five men stared over the side at the witch as she sniffed the cookie, turning in different directions as if she were trying to home in on the smell but couldn't. She didn't seem to know what to do with the piece of cookie on the ground. She stared at it, poked it with a long nail, but made no move to snap it up.
"Doc Mercer wasn't kidding..." Ellis blinked in surprise. "She ain't eatin, with her ribs showing like that you'd think..."
"Think we can catch her? Shame to waste the experiment subject and maybe Ethan will know what to do." George, the man with the cookies, suggested.
"After last night I used some of my candy rations to trade for some trank darts... signed out the gun." The oldest nodded. "At the very least we can get Mason some peace and quiet tonight."
"you folks really care about that boy doncha?" Ellis asked, a warm smile crossing his face for a moment. "Looks like he's in good hands with you folks."
"Everyone is curious about him to some extent or another. But if he dies before he learns how to talk again we won't know what happened to him." George explained. "And after all that craziness, I mean his behavior's spot on for a witch but every test we got says he's human."
"maybe it was the sugar..." Something was rolling around in Ellis' brain, it just took awhile because he'd been woken up in the middle of the night. "The sugar mill! Thats it! Thats why the witches were there."
"Hmmm? Whatchu on about?" The oldest guard of the four turned to look at him from where he was counting and loading the trank darts.
"We stopped at this sugar mill on the way here... the place was swarming with witches. One of them had sugarcane pulp under her finger nails. A whole bunch of it came off in my wounds when she sliced me. I thought she'd just gotten caught in the canes or something and sliced them away in frustration. What if she were touchin the rollers? What if they wanted the sugar!"
"Woad will know." George assured him. "Ready Phil?" He asked the oldest of the group.
"Yep... I got 3 magazines each to get us over to this part of the wall. Lucky for us the Gate's not more than 50 feet from our station." The soft clank of a trank dart echoed in the night air. The witch screamed and started trying to climb the wall. But it was for naught, the curved outer poles of the fence kept knocking her off. Her quickened pulse caused the tranquilizer to take effect faster. In a minute or so the witch fell over asleep from the drug.
Ellis shoed Mason back to bed, heading for Woad's little office off the morgue entrance where George told him the boy's cot would be. He gave one of the cookies to Mason and the boy gladly ate it without complaint. Mason followed Ellis into the morgue entrance and the mechanic counted the doors till he came to one that was ajar with the name "Woad" on it. "hey doc... hey doc..." Ellis knelt next to a small cot and the blanket covered figure on it and shook Doctor Woad.
"Nrg." The elderly Coroner groaned, eyes fluttering open. "What is it my boy?" He sat up. "oh... Mason thank you for getting him."
"Phil tranked a witch. They're restrainin her and bringin her in." Ellis kept his voice low.
"oooooh after the shrieking last night I'm not surprised he did that Phil doesn't like loud noise if it doesn't suit tactical necessity to do so. Well best not to waste a trank." he gave Ellis a notepad and a roll of tape and told Mason. "Go back to bed my boy... you're safe... no screaming tonight."
"Sissy didn't scream tonight..." Mason yawned, going to another cot on the other side of Woad's office and laying down. The boy swallowed the last of his cookie and wrapped himself up in blankets.
"Poor kid." Ellis muttered, taking the items and the pen Woad dug out of his pocket. "What're these for?"
"Go to the cages, there's 7 open near H Doe, the hunter from the trial group. Put a note on one saying what happened. Should be unlocked."
Ellis hurried up the hall to the room where the infected specimens were kept. He opened one of the empty cages and started writing the note. "captured... during... night... watch..."
"Graoooow..." H Doe sat up on the heavy mats he'd fallen asleep on in his cage, getting to his knees and raising his head to sniff the air.
"Easy big fella." Ellis made some kind of pacifying gesture at the Hunter without thinking about it.
"mrrmmmble..." the Hunter yawned, then shuffled to the front of his cage and looked up at Ellis, one good eye blinking up at him under the hood. There were claw marks around his eyes, the scabs starting to peal off to leave scars. His eye, the hunter's remaining eye was a bright blue. Did they all have eyes like that? He couldn't remember. Maybe the use of the blood serum was making Ellis paranoid about H Doe, looking for things and behaviors that weren't there.
"Hey you're blind in that eye? What happened?" Ellis started pulling off four pieces of tape to hang the note with, attaching each to his wrist to keep them out of the way. Sure enough, it looked like H Doe had clawed at his face. "Seriously? did you claw your own eye out? Whatcha do that for?"
"Hnnrrgggrrr." The Hunter put his face right up to the cage door. "Hraaaaaaaarrrrr..." It was a quieter version of his pouncing roar, with a quizical edge to it.
"Well you sound a bit closer to human now. Making different noises from before aincha... why aincha attackin me?" Ellis hurriedly hung the note.
Scriiiiittcchhh scriiiiiiiiitcchhh. H Doe slowly, tentatively started scratching the front of the cage door, as if he didn't understand what it was there for.
"Huh, creepy... maybe Doc's right." Ellis mused. "you don act like a normal hunter. Her blood serum do that to ya?" He put a reassuring hand on the glass and wire door of the cage.
H Doe tried to swipe at it with a snarl.
On instinct Ellis snatched his hand back. At that moment Phil came wheeling the witch in on a gurney with Woad. The others had gone back to the wall. Woad quickly started drawing blood from the witch's arm. "Hmm? What's this?" He held one of the vials up to the light. "Sludgy blood?"
"So the virus probably did it, hurry up doc we gotta get her locked down." Phil said with a grumpy scowl.
"You're right about getting her locked down, but none of the specials I dissected this past week had sludgy blood." Woad got four vials. "I reccomend thoroughly washing your hands my good man, and keeping an eye out for if you get sick. You never know. Its been a couple weeks since I've seen one like this... maybe two and a half. And nobody got sick from handling the one I'm thinking of."
"Why what are you thinking?" Phil asked, scowl deepening. Ellis' head tilted slightly as well.
"That I do not wish a repeat of the Broad Street pump! And neither should any former or current resident of the united kingdom." Woad said fervently. "I will do some testing, and tell you what I found in the morning!"
Within a few minutes the witch was hooked up to an IV and locked up in the cage next to H Doe's. Phil went back to his watch very grumpy. "how come ya added sugar to it?" Ellis wondered curiously.
"Her body needs to make blood plasma, it can't do that if her blood sugar is chronically low. At this point I don't think she could eat even if we gave her that serum. A common sense response my boy, if you are dealing with someone who's ill and severely dehydrated, is to give them water salt and sugar as best you can, it will keep their blood from becoming like our dear witch here. Poor lass. Maddened, sickened and starved."
"you don't hate them at all do ya?" Ellis asked curiously. "I don't know if I should or not... they did a lotta damage but they didn't understand what was goin on."
"My boy they are victims, albeit victims trying to kill us but they are victims none the less, and every line in this poor girl's face has a story to tell. Or rather on her arms."
"Why whaddid you see?" Ellis bent close to the cage. In the dim light he caught it... scars across her arms and punctures on her legs here and there. "These needle scars?"
"And cutting scars. The poor lass was in emotional agony before turning and she still is. No surcease. Probably painkillers, to dull her from feeling anything. The cuts release pleasant chemicals into the brain. Its why some people who cut just can't stop."
"What would happen if you gave her that serum of Mercer's?"
"Right now? probably kill her, get a couple of these ivs into her though... hell she's so dehydrated I don't think she could even relieve herself poor girl. We had a witch do this before. Then as now we took a blood sample and found it sludgy. The sample was negative for cholera. She probably doesn't have it, but my minor in premed was history. I know what diseases to watch for, all of them the worst killers of mankind and all of them could take advantage of a vulnerable population like ours. When it was rife, Cholera could fell young men in the prime of their lives, like yourself, in a little over a day. And when sanitation made it impossible for the disease to spread, if forced itself to become milder so that people with it would travel someplace where it could spread again... sound familiar?"
"The green flu." Ellis answered, nodding sagely. "We don't feel a damn thing. You tellin me this is some kind of adaptation to spread where people don't have it?"
"Yes, and its neither the first nor will it be the last. Syphallis is also two faced in this manner. The version Colombus brought home with him turned virulent and vile because the people there didn't have shared dishes the way the native americans did. When it could spread with shared cups and bowls Syphalis was mild, but the Spaniards all had their own dishes, so it became an STD. But there are many odd things about the green flu that I don't think natural shifting could account for. And Doctor Mercer agrees with me. About fifty percent of the people who have the green flu, their virus has a protien present we've previously only seen in flu viruses, hemaglutanin. Its what lets the regular flu virus get into lung cells. Smokers, Boomers and Spitters seem to have the highest concentrations of these hemaglutanin positive green flu viruses, with carriers like yourself the proportions are closer to 50/50."
"But I thought it was a mutant rabies..." Ellis' eyes widened a moment. "... Rochelle even pointed out the cows where their heads were cut open was a test for it."
"What does that tell you then? Viruses swap genes by infecting the same cell simultaneously. Flu is well known for crossing species in this manner. But Rabies infects nerve cells, flu infects lung cells. The two should never meet. And in all of historical memory, rabies itself has never shifted genes. Flu on the other hand is one of the fastest mutating viruses on the planet. Its why we have a forecast every year, and a different vaccine every year. It moves so fast. They both use RNA so they aren't incompatible, but the odds against them meeting each other in the same patient and fusing are astronomical." Woad said grimly. "Think my dear lad, take the evidence and try to piece it together in your mind."
"You're saying..." Ellis felt the color drain from his face. "Somebody made this?"
"Unfortunately. But I don't think they counted on the special infected. The reason why bioweapons were never used, despite the soviet union and united states making them in ton quantity during the cold war, is because they can't be controlled the way a gun or a bomb can. They can't make decisions like soldiers do. There's a chance that a bioweapon could end up destroying your entire country along with your enemy. Hell it took 50 years or more for the brittish to get rid of the anthrax they let loose on Grunard Island. They were lucky, sheep and horses were the only casualties. And it may not even have been our military. The soviets way back when, when their country fell, for a few months there was no security at any military base in the former soviet block, including the ones making bioweapons. Then there's the possibility of a doomsday cult, Oom Shin Rikyo had ebola in vials in their laboratory, but went with sarin because they couldn't aerosolize it properly."
Ellis could not absorb the possibilty that a human being could have done this to another. He looked down at the witch in the cage, at the IV in her arm, at the scars on her arms and legs. "Its not right." He gulped. His skin started to crawl at the thought. What if he'd been a little too faster or slower to get to that evac site on the Vannah roof? What would have happened if he had never met them? Would he be... like this witch? Could a carrier turn into a special infected at a later date? If the virus didn't get a chance to spread by being social what would it do next? His hackles stood up, and he almost missed Woad's response.
"No its not. And that is why caring people like you or I should care about a cure, and about making sure that our people are protected." H Doe growled a bit at Ellis. He crouched there distrustfully, staring up at Ellis' face while the young man fought with his terror. "Well now, thats another interesting change. He's watching your body language. I can tell you from experience they generally don't care. If you're running about and they can get a clear jump they'll do it. Even if it means smacking their faces on bulletproof glass."
"He's what?" Ellis turned to look at the hunter. "Seriously? You watchin my face?" He leaned down to get a better look, chuckling a bit. H Doe responded to this by looking away from Ellis' face and slicing at the glass in a surly manner. "Hey I recognize that from my sister's cat. He wouldn't look me in the face but boy he loved watchin when he thought my back was turned."
"yes well, the sounds they make the way they hunt, Hunters are definately cat like. We can trace infections by special infected onto humans for a short ways, make a rough guess what special type a person was infected by. But usually this fades to a baseline after awhile. All the folks in Seargant Carter's unit, most of them turned we monitored their change after a spitter wrecked their APC. And when they went out one by one it was similar. But thats how we know the ratio changes. The number of tires we've had them destroy. Its insane. Military hardware didn't grow on trees before the zombie apocalypse and it may as well be diamonds now." He hesitated. "If you're curious, I could try and trace it for you. It takes a couple months for the ratio to fade to baseline you might still have detectable markers indicating what infected you."
"Naw, I don't need to know when I was infected I am thats what matters now." Ellis looked down at the two special infected in the cages. "I ever meet the sons of bitches that did this to ya... they're gonna wish they were dead. I got lucky I guess, walked through fire and didn't even know it. But you guys got burned, so bad you don't even know what end is up." He put a hand to the glass of H Doe's cage. Ellis had this look on his face, like he was looking at someone dying in the hospital, rather than a zombie in a cage. "It just ain't right whats been done to ya. If we met on the street I'd still kill ya and you would me... but thats survival, and you been turned into an animal, you're so fucked up in the head ya don't know any better."
H Doe hesitated... and then carefully reached up, like he expected Ellis to hit him or something. But instead he put a grizzled, scarred, clawed palm up to the glass, up against Ellis' palm, with a quizzical look on his face.
"Mimickry is a good sign Ellis." Woad told him. "You should get to bed."
"Yeah... sure doc... might have trouble getting back to sleep." Ellis mumbled. He turned to go, stopping at the door to Woad's office. "Goodnight Mason, sleep well."
"Ni ni Elli." The boy yawned.
"Well, thats the first time he's called anyone by a nickname you know." Woad yawned. "I've set my phone to go off in two hours to check the witch's IV. Tempted to call her Morgain Doe instead of W Doe. But we'll see."
"Whassat from?" Woad's yawn was catching, Ellis stopped for just a moment to find out but he could already feel his eyes drooping.
"King arthur. You've never read any of those old stories? Morgain, Morgana, Morrigan, Morgan Le Fay, all names for the wicked witch that was Arthur's nemesis. Therefore its a fitting nickname to give a witch. And with more noble lineage than calling her Malificent doe or West doe. Why, the celts worshiped Morrigan as their angel of death. No wonder the midevil church made her a villain."
"Nuhuh, there's a morgan horse, that would be an aweful name to give a witch. Who wants to be named after a horse?" Ellis pointed out, "For now W Doe should be ok. Everyone would know who you were talkin about."
"Ah, fair enough. Goodnight Ellis. You're a good man. Most of the ordinary folk and the soldiers don't think much about the infected other than "will they kill me?" You, like those of us remaining from CEDA see a human suffering greatly."
"night doc, and thanks... I got a lot to think about." Ellis shuffled away to the half finished apartment he shared with the rest of his group. A tupperware container was waiting in front of their door, with a note. "Two for each of us." He looked up at the guard post, to see George looking in his direction. Ellis smiled and offered the man a thumbs up rather than shout. Ellis sat two snickerdoodles on the bedside tables of his companions and then set the container with his share on his bedside table. They barely stirred, although Ellis saw Coach's nostrils start twitching in his sleep. Even in his dreams Coach could pick up the smell of something delicious.
Ellis pulled the blankets up to his chin and rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face into his pillow. He had a real bed! Suddenly something so simple made him so happy! Ellis wiggled his toes into the sheets and snuggled his cheek up to the pillow and suddenly he was in a deep, dreamless, but blissful sleep.