AN: Just a tiny aside since i got a great review last chapter. I do have voices in my mind for Woad and Mercer. If you want to know who, play fallout 4 and just... go look at the safehouse list in the Railroad HQ. :D names will all become clear. As for woad. i'm gonna put a little easter egg and you can guess who his voice actor is supposed to be.

I also take some inspiration, in terms of the people and society developing at Fort Colony, from the Pernese society in the book series "Dragonriders of Pern" by anne mc caffrey, a book series I can't reccomend enough, rest Anne's soul. Many of the same elements are in lepers. A charismatic soldier with major leadership chops, an intelligent headstrong female counterpart to him, wise old craftsmen who are the best at what they do and dedicated to guiding and teaching their communities.

There's also a literary reference in Randy Carter's name. Randolph Carter is the character HP Lovecraft used as a self insertion protagonist in his stories. If you want to hear Lovecraft's work, the youtube channel Horror Babble regularly produces audiobook performances of his work. Be warned that Lovecraft had very specific hangups about race and typecasting that would be socially unacceptable today. View with historical context from his era, the 1920s, and procede with caution if you're easily triggered.

~Present~

"Soooo..." Coach had gone to hook their boat to the One 4 All. "Can you... tell me about Francis?" Rochelle asked Louis with a nosy expression on her face.

"What about him?" It looked like the tips of Louis' ears were pink.

"Like where he's froooom, did he have a girl friend, what were his family like."

Louis laughed. "He's from Philly like us, his girlfriend turned into a zombie and bit him, thats how he got infected, and his family well... he never talked about them. Francis is a bit of a punk, but he hates being lonely." Louis added. "But what makes you think I'd know anyway?" A really big blush was creeping up his cheeks.

"Cause you guys are all friends. I mean on the trail you must have been close." She peered up at him, "Louis why are you blushing?"

"no reason." Yep, Louis was slowly turning red under his dark skin.

"You guys aren't gonna get jealous are you? If i start trying to get Francis' attention?"

"Me? no, why would you say that?"

"Because of the color rising in your cheeks every time I pry a little deeper?" Rochelle smirked. "C'moooon, if you like me just say so. I have to keep my options open after all."

"NO NO NO um... its not that. Just... before I tell you you have to understand... Francis and I thought we were going to turn... we didn't want to be alone..."

Rochelle blushed furiously and started giggling. "Oh my god... you slept with him? Was he good? He does have big hands."

"All the things you could say and you want to know /that/? Fine... yes he has a big dick. Yes he is good. No we are not currently seeing each other. It wasn't serious." African american culture, and southern culture in general, wasn't known for being all that accepting of homosexuality. There was an unspoken expectation that you 'be a man' and 'settle down' get an education, get a job, get a house with a white picket fence and show your white neighbors in suburbia that you were black and just as smart and well off as they were. Louis didn't agree with it though. He just wanted to be normal. Fuck all these old fashioned unspoken rules about where young black men were expected to go and where failure to do so would take them. "Just... I really don't want to think about it anymore. I enjoyed what we did, it was comforting. But death never came, we never turned. We figured we'd wait to turn and then eat a bullet. But it didn't happen." Louis rolled up his sleeve and showed Rochelle the scar on his arm. "I got bit within days of the start of the infection."

"Wow, so you were there? At ground zero?" Rochelle's eyes widened.

"Yeah, four densely populated cities in close proximity and connected by public transit; Philidelphia, Newark, Trenton and New York City. I was from Philly. Now... I guess I'm from wherever I am." Louis realized he'd been looking at his feet. "Rochelle look, I don't want to talk about it, what I do want to know is what they found out about the infected."

"Well, that I can tell you..."

~flashback~

Ellis had stepped back a little ways while Woad had a talk with Nick and Ricky on their way to their afternoon guard shift. Whatever deal was struck the two of them shook hands on it, and Nick suddenly seemed to become more focused. Woad handed over two small boxes with some sort of warning label on it and rejoined the Mechanic. "There we go... come my boy I'll show you the Major."

Woad lead them past his office and the morgue, "I've still got to clean up that leg..." He eyed the now inert limb on the autopsy table. He counted the doors on the hallway until he got a little ways past his. "This was my last assistant's office. Poor Danielle wasn't able to fight as well as you. And this is her toy, the Major, its a mass spectrometry device. You put an unknown substance through this, and it tells you all the chemicals making up its physical form, including a limited sample of biological materials including amino acids and common viruses. She programmed the molecular signature of the green flu's protien shell into it not long before she passed."

There were a bunch of stuffed toys and some goth looking decorations hanging on the walls. Ellis picked up a stuffed toy hippo sitting on the spectrometer. "Cute..." He squished it to see how worn the stuffing was and the hippo made a fart noise. "For real!?"

Woad nodded. "oh Dani loved that toy. Leant it to newcomers in emotional distress. She loved children, left an infant son behind, not even a year when the infection started. Passed her immunity onto him." Woad had a sad look in his eye. "The office is not as merry without her. I'll leave you to have a look at it, the manual should be on the shelf above her desk. If things work out with this job you can box up the decorations and I'll give this office to you. I know you like cars but we need delicate equipment repaired badly."

Ellis nodded and went to the shelf. Sure enough a number of manuals for lab equipment including the mass spectrometer were lined up neatly. He pulled the one he wanted off the shelf, then opened an access panel to the machine's inner workings and started comparing the pieces.

Coach entered the boy's hospital room with Lilly and Lovelace. "Please tell me one of you speaks spanish?"

"Kinda with enough time to frame a sentance." Lovelace held up a worn out Spanish dictionary. "I know how to conjugate and I know the grammer."

The boy did turn out to speak Spanish, after Coach tried to make conversation with what little vocabulary he had in the language it turned out the boy knew a few sentances in english, food words and greetings and that was about it. After some work Lovelace and Lilly managed to write a message in spanish that translated into...

Welcome to Fort Colony, New Orleans.
I am Lilly, a Nurse. I am deeply sorry for the loss of your leg. You had a strange mutation coming out of it and we felt it was safer to remove it. Can you tell me what happened?

It took a few minutes, the boy gulping at the smoothie like it was the first cold fluid he'd had in his life and as he did so he worked on his response.

I am Peter, from San Juan, my mother turned and bit me on the leg.

Lovelace translated the message, Coach blinked at it. "Smokers don't have females."

Lilly took a deep breath, dictated the next message, and Lovelace answered.

We have never seen a female smoker, is something odd about your mother's medical history? We need to know how that specific mutation happened. Any detail is useful.

The boy read the message, he was still very pale looking under his tan and very thin.

She had a histerectomy, uterine cancer, shortly after having me. She developed elevated testosterone levels that medicine couldn't bring down.

Lilly nodded eagerly. "The doctors will be glad to hear this... grim though it is. We already know Green Flu wrecks the endocrine system." She took quick notes, "ask him if we can take the medical files he had on him for his mother, and where he was when the disease started showing up."

Lovelace nodded and managed to translate the message using a dictionary. The boy blinked and replied on the notepad.

If you give them back you may take them, we were at the airport, we were going to Philly but all the flights were canceled a gringo got off the plane and started a fight. He slugged my mother! What did she ever do to deserve this? She was not pretty towards the end I know, but God left her her grace!

Lilly's next question was. How did you survive?

I hid in El Yunque, the zombies couldn't move fast in the jungle, too thick. Its a national forest, I know i shouldn't have hunted or camped in there but I needed to eat! I was frightened. I stayed away and hid when people showed up.

Coach, Lilly and Lovelace looked at each other. "I'll keep working on this and sit with him. You two have a science class."

Coach nodded. "hope the kid's ok. Take care Lovelace." He looked over at Lilly and asked. "What's El Yunque?"

"I always do. Things require a delicate touch more often than most of us want to admit."

"He has the carrier gene, not the markers for a smoker, so he probably won't turn." Lilly assured Coach as they left. "As for El Yunque, its a national forest, the only tropical rainforest on US soil. The terrain is rough, even for the most agile of infected. It rains every day, its quite slippery, the undergrowth is dense so it would break up smoker and spitter line of sight. The only downside is the risk of secondary illness. If a tumor took hold on him like that it means something, stress probably, reduced his immune response so that his immune system either didn't find or didn't recognize the tumor cells."

Lilly lead Coach to a corner of the gardens with three large geodeisc dome greenhouses. In the middle was a work area and a two or three foot deep pond with some sort of fish Coach didn't recognize in it. The domes were about the diameter of the pickup trucks used for patrols and scavenging with a vent above the doors. Behind one of the green houses Coach caught a glimpse of some kind of plaster or clay mound and when he looked around the other side of the greenhouse he saw a large earthen oven. A half circle of two dozen teenagers, including Martin and six teenage girls, one wearing a tattered "volunteer" t-shirt, was waiting in the work area. "Kids we have a possible new teacher learning his way around, this is Coach."

There was a cautious murmer of greeting. "Hey kids, nice to meetcha. I taught physical education and health in Savannah, Georgia." Coach was used to teenage antics, it served him well with Ellis and it would now.

"If things work out with Coach we'll have him teach you kids combat basics, target practice, weight training, that sort of thing." Lilly beamed. "But for now, we have plants to check and vegetables to pick. You have your assigned garden beds and we have some hot pepper seedlings that need to go into the bed. First though, we need to review. Lets see... who can tell me the latin name for crops in the tomato family, and where they primarily come from?"

The girl in the volunteer t-shirt raised her hand. Lilly pointed to her. "Solanum, most of which come from the Americas. The exceptions are eggplant and belladona. Eggplant has traveled throughout southeast asia and Europe and Belladona is poisonous. The solanum family includes peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and a number of smaller fruits that never caught on."

"Right, so who can tell me about Belladona? Why is it planted in small numbers outside the wall despite being poisonous?"

Martin raised his hand. "Its used to harvest the medication Atropine, used for dialating the pupils in the eye for examination. Because of that the WHO considered it an important medicinal herb to preserve."

"Correct. What family contains cucumbers? Who can tell me about it?"

The surly looking boy with the samurai sword raised his hand. "Curcubitacae, the gourd family, containing pumpkins, squash, gourds, cucumbers and melons."

"correct, they exist on both mega continents, and consist of roughly 975 species, but humans only cultivate a fraction of those. Who can tell me why thats a bad thing? Anyone?"

Three kids raised their hands, and when called on they responded in unison, as if they'd worked very hard to reherse their reply. "Genetic diversity allows for greater resistance to disease and extreme weather. Regionally raised cultivars and plants are the best..."

After about five minutes of this sort of review everyone scattered to a set of garden beds. The kids all had critter keepers, magnefying glasses, and a notepad and instructions to find an insect, draw it, and identify it for homework, meantime would everyone please work on their preferred garden patches? "This way, I'll show you the willows I grew. I kind of have a plan for how to use them. Only three beds outside the walls are marked out however. The rest we have to drill, and that needs to be with a lot of guards on the walls because if a group of infected evade our patrols we'll have a hoarde. Nine times out of ten its just a few specials that show up though. Nothing overwhelming."

"And the remaining ten percent?" Coach asked worriedly.

"Once or twice we'll get a big hoarde of commons come through." Lilly shivered. "We had to put the generators for our medical equipment underground." The willow trees were just sticks, two foot long twigs, set in buckets with fish tank water filters running through them. Lilly plucked up one of the yellow colored sticks and Coach could see roots growing out of it, a long healthy looking tangle. "all of our heavy equipment is going to be moved down there eventually and only brought out for specific tasks."

"How'd you get that to work?" Coach eyed the branch curiously. "They look aweful small for something to break up spitter fire."

"just stick them in water and they grow. They grow very fast, two or three years and they'll be as big as you are. If the infection drags on long enough, they'll provide plenty of cover and they're easy to prune so we can make them the height and shape we want. The branches can be made into baskets or medicine or screens to further assist in breaking up infected line of sight." Lilly smiled. "I love willows." Her manner was so serene, so stately. Coach was entranced. "When i was a child we had a house with a stream in back and a great big willow tree. I used to use the branches and string to make doll houses. And my mother... she made a bench, a living bench, weaving the branches. On a starry night we'd sit out there, me and mom and dad and they'd take turns telling me stories."

"Sounds idyllic." Coach realized how closely they were standing together. Lilly was so beautiful, even though her hair was graying and her eyes had stress lines around them. The world seemed still around them, and just when they'd leaned close enough Coach was sure he'd get a kiss...

... "NURSE LILLYYYYYYY COOOAAAAACH! MAKE TONY GO TO THE INFIRMARY!" The girl in the volunteer shirt ran in, her slightly scruffy black ponytail streaming behind her. "HE GOT HOT PEPPER JUICE IN HIS EYES FARTING AROUND AGAIN!"

"YOU AREN'T MY MINDER TINA!" A black haired boy with similar appearance to the girl yelled. His right eye was swelling and fallen shut with tears spilling out of the corner.

"YOU'RE A JERK! JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE FOUR MINUTES OLDER THAN ME YOU THINK YOU CAN BOSS ME AROUND!" The girl yelled.

"AM NOT!" "AM TOO!" "AM NOT!" "AM TOO!"

Lilly let out an exasperated noise. "WHAT have I told you about taking care of yourself?" She dragged Tony off. "Coach my lesson plan is on the bullitain board in the work area. I'm going to get this one a milk compress and a chill pill."

"Milk?" Coach questioned as Lilly dragged the teenager away.

"First aid for hot pepper burn, drink milk if you've eaten it or make a cold compress using it if its gotten on you." The girl explained as Coach went over to grab the lesson plan. "Then put it on the burning area. Its why you serve cheese and spicy food together." The girl smirked, proud of herself.

A yell went up from the wall. "SPITTER HIT THE DIRT!" Coach dropped his lesson plan, catching sight of the goopy missile headed for one of the garden beds.

"I got it i got it i got it!" he heard Nick yelling somewhere behind him as Coach ran towards that bed, hauling the student working on that garden bed away. The students gathered around the damaged plants and fizzling goo with disappointment on their faces. "Great... you can have that one." Tina grumbled to Coach. "There's some salad mix in there, for growing stir fry greens. Its the ammo can marked 'blends.'"

"eeeewwwwww..." One of the kids used a stick to pick up a pepper from the ruined raised bed that was blackened and melted to what looked like paper and goop.

"Keep it away from me!" One of the younger boys looked slightly green. "I'm gonna lose my lunch!" The group of kids were disheartened at the sight.

"Alright now, settle down we're ok. What are the odds another one's gonna come?" Coach cupped his hands to his mouth. "Hey nick did you get her? We got some kids here who are real annoyed at that spitter!"

"Yeah, we're catching specimens for Woad don't mind us! If they want to get a look at the monster later they'll get their chance."

"Sweet! Thanks Nick!" Coach turned to the students. "you hear that? your hard work is avenged." He walked over to the tools and ammo cans full of seed packets and started leafing through them.

When Lilly came back half an hour later, aggravated from teenage boy daredevil antics, she found Coach hard at work to replant the damaged seed bed, piling the dead pepper plants up, goo now inert from reacting with the plants. "The soil looks fluffy after the spitter hit it... how could that be? I'd have thought it would be goopy."

"reacts with the silica part of the soil." Lilly chuckled. "Eventually there's no more protons to donate no more covalent bonds to bind electrons together and the acid dissapates, leaving soft friable soil with easily accessible organic matter for insects. They swarm in over a few days to the spitter damaged soil, turning it into insect frass, insect manure really, and the soil turns black and fluffy and great for gardening, what did you pick to plant?"

"Stupid spitters, this is the third one in a month!" Every so often Tina was grumbling in irritation and taking it out on the weeds in the garden beds.

"Sassy salad mix." Coach chuckled. "Sounded sexy." They were close again, and he blushed like a schoolgirl.

The two looked into each other's eyes... and they were about to kiss again when the littlest of the class started making ooooooh noises and chanting. "Coach and teacher sittin in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

Coach stood, suddenly realizing his bum knee had gotten stiff. "Don't you sass your elders young man. Someday you'll be kissing a girl and have some bratty teenager do that to you, and how would you like it?"

"Here..." Lilly handed Coach a knee pad. "Remember to use one of these next time."

"Thanks... old football injury."

"Never understood the sport. Medically its barbaric. We expect way too much from our young men, and they pay for it with brain injuries and joint pain for the rest of their lives." Lilly looked about to fuss, a posessive smile on her face.

"So um... the kid?" Coach asked hopefully.

"Oh Tony is laying down in the infirmary, sound asleep with a compress on his eye. I caught him with an empty benedryl pill packet. One of those push paper things. He must have taken the last one so he'd sleep it off."

Out of the corner of his eye Coach could see the spitter that wrecked the garden bed carried unconscious to doctor Woad's office. He could see the red feathered syringe sticking out of the base of her neck.

"Come on, some of the traders have been asking for hot peppers and one of them is due tomorrow. We should cover Tony's bed. It was going to be his trade."

As the afternoon wore on and Lilly periodically stopped the students work to show them different bugs or edible weeds that had cropped up in the garden beds. She had to refer to a clipboard for most of the edible wild plants, but knew enough of the good and bad ones to be able to teach the subject. Eventually crops gave way to visiting the fish pond. "Tilapia are related to what african fish kids?"

"Cichlids!"

"Thats right! They proliferate by the hundreds or even thousands per clutch of eggs and are adapted for tropical regions. They consume mosquitoes and algae so they're very useful for cleaning waterways and can be used to protect bodies of water from mosquito born diseases like malaria and west nile virus. With the infected posing a continuous danger its important to control other disease vectors because our colony is vulnerable to secondary infection."

"YEAH BABY THATS FIVE! HOW MANY YOU GOT RICKY?" Nick crowed. Throughout the lesson Coach noticed a steady stream of special and common infected with trank darts in their chests, necks and stomachs. A smoker, two hunters, a jockey with a plaid newsboy cap still pulled down over his head, a hunter with his hoodie sleeves and pants ripped off to about mid thigh, six commons, and a boomer with a mohawk of all hairstyles were the ones Coach had counted but the sounds of eager guards could be heard now and again implying that they were catching a lot more than he'd seen.

Lilly chuckled. "Woad probably had a contest for who could trank the most infected again."

"he do that before?" Coach looked over at her and Lilly handed him a basket of the tilapia the teenagers had netted.

"Yep, come on, these will give us fried fish or maybe even some chili for the kitchens. I know it was on the list for next week but we're running out of canned chicken and canned beef hash to make it with." Lilly sighed.

"Anything but lentils." Coach shook his head.

"Legumes are very reliable storage Coach." Lilly bumped him in a friendly way with her shoulder. "We just need things to balence them out thats all. Onions should be ready soon, but the collards we're only harvesting every other week. And spices well... the really strong hot peppers are Mari's domain. If you're feeling brave trade for some of those ghost chili crosses. Appearantly they're so strong they're used for elephant repellant in india. Or were, since the infection might have gotten them."

"World without elephants huh, kinda sad to me." Coach mused, shoulder bumping her back as they headed for the kitchens with their harvest.

By the time Ellis got done assessing the mass spectrometer the cages had begun to fill up with more infected. This time the Smoker was rushed away under heavy tranquilizers to the MRI. As the guards headed back out to the wall, Ellis noticed they were carrying extra boxes of explosive and incendiary ammo. "Expecting a hoarde doc?"

"They tick up when we turn on the generators attached to the MRI and Xray machines until about an hour after they're done running. The boxes I gave Nick and Ricky are for their personal stashes this is being issued in case of more specials."

Nick passed them, about kicking up his heals. "Gonna be a swingin party kiddo, too bad you're not invited." He stuck out his tongue at Ellis. "I got three more than Ricky but he's closing in fast."

"Are you sure its not Mari you're trying to impress rather than beatin Ricky?" Ellis asked with an annoyed expression on his face.

Nick swung a bit too close to H Doe's cage and the hunter snapped his teeth at Nick's flailing arm, snarling a warning to stay back.

"You and me both pardner." Ellis stopped to look down in the two cages. The witch had worn through two IV bags the previous night before Woad had finally authorized the serum. She was asleep on the cage mat. A new control group was being set up and another row of cages were being assembled.

"We're going to need to build a holding facility, these will fill up fairly quickly." Woad started checking the control cages one by one. Ellis picked up a crowbar and followed Woad, acting as a backup in case one tried to break free. "you probably won't need that." Woad told him. "I think our tank is about to bite it in a minute or two." The biggest of the cages was seperate and covered. "This was from the previous control group. But his blood pressure's been steadily rising over the past few days. His heart may be about to give out."

"Why?" Ellis blinked in surprise. "How long did he last? How long ago did you do the trial?"

"We had him a few days before the trial, about a week. His own body is burning him alive." Woad flipped up the cover.

The tank's legs had been bound with concrete, with a chain sticking out of it. He saw the two humans and roared angrily, struggling to get to his feet. The tank reached out to bang on the door only to stumble, as though he were faint. "Average body heat is a hundred and four for this guy. We implanted some instruments to monitor his vitals while he was knocked out before we put him in here and averaged out his resting body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate the entire time. We drew blood daily, had an intravenous port put into his shoulder. We tried for the veins in the neck but no dice, the point we'd have inserted it into is subsumed in muscle."

Ellis watched pityingly. Tanks, and killing or avoiding them, were literally matters of life and death. His squad could be slaughtered or almost so in a couple of minutes if they weren't careful fighting one and he did not want to have to deal with one trying to get out of the cage. But as the tank struggled on the ground, breathing heavy, heartbeat getting faster and faster on the monitor, temperature rising, Ellis could only feel pity for the poor mutated beast that used to be a man. "you gone put him out of his misery?"

"Not without twenty heavily armed guards backing me up. As it was I had to trank him about half the time I took blood."

The tank was struggling on the ground, panting feverishly. Then all of a sudden he jerked, and the monitor flatlined. "Severe adrenal stress, leading to heart failure. The last two we captured met the same fate. Testosterone levels are terrifyingly high, their blood plasma is flooded with damaged cells and mitochondria that were left behind when his cells started to break. Its as if the heat, the virus, the hormone flood, all conspired to make this thing its own funeral pyre. He lies dormant in there, not sleeping or hibernating just... there... until we open the curtain. We kept it there for his own safety. In the past our trucks have outrun tanks only for the lumbering brutes to collapse from exhaustion and these too died of heart failure. Their hearts just burst." Woad crossed himself and began to open the cage. "Get me a gurney Mister Ellis... we'll get him to autopsy while he's still warm. I'd like you to study the manuals Dani left behind. She wrote on them, leaving instructions on how to operate the mass spectrometer."

Deep below the compound, Rochelle followed Lovelace and a trio of technicians with a gas can and a headlamp. "how far down are we?" She asked worriedly.

"About 50 feet. We've got catecombs, where we bury the colony's dead down the tunnel on the right, and our generators are sunk into the soil closer to us than that on the right, to reduce the noise they make. It seems to work. To the left we have the new research facility. We dug it specifically for overflow in the event that Doc Mercer's research into the infected bears fruit. But its just an empty earthen room for now." Lovelace set down his old fashioned railroad lantern. "This is it. Look down." Rochelle could see the top of a generator sticking out of the soil. "We need this for the kid too. Docs want to xray him and/or MRI him. The Smoker and spitter specimens will get checked over afterwards, restrained and tranquilized with blindfolds on of course."

Another technician spoke up. "This is also the only place where we can really use heavy machinery without the infected catching on too badly. The soil dissapates the soundwaves. Our northern outpost is built on limestone caverns for this reason. We used scrap metal from damaged buildings and pieces of damaged cars to help shore up the cieling of it otherwise it could turn into a sinkhole, which we don't want because the infected will stream in, fall to their deaths and then we'll have corpses to clean."

One by one they emptied their gascans into the generator. "This should provide electricity to the medical machinery until around midnight. More than long enough to screen every infected in our custody with the MRI and Xray imagers. We could even opt to end our work night earlier by flipping a switch and enabling a battery to soak up the remaining electricity and feed it back out in the morning when we're ready to use it." Lovelace pulled the switch and radioed into his walkie talkie. "This is Lovelace, we've started the generator."

Above in the labs, H Doe started growling. The sleeping witch in the cell next to him jumped, creeling slightly in confusion and wobbling back and forth. She made a noise, like she was trying to keen a couple of notes, only for them to rasp in her throat, then began glowering out from the confines of her cage. Every time Ellis looked at her she tried to rip through the glass and when he wasn't looking directly at her the witch would keep her head low to the ground. H Doe was on alert too, but not angry or trying to attack, more like curious. "Graaaaaow?" He started pacing in confusion.

"Ellis close the curtains covering the cages." Woad urged him. "The vibrations underground are confusing our guests. And get H Doe some bone broth, its a bit early but we need to try and desensitize him. I've got to figure out how to keep this tank on ice. There's an empty walk in cooler I think..." One of the nurses, come to check on the activity and lend a hand, got flagged down and sent to go looking instead of Woad.

"rerrreooooorar" H Doe started to growl and grumble, looking down at his feet and stamping his hands and feet on the ground as though he were trying to target something under his feet. The commons weren't much better, sliding their feet across the ground. Ellis moved down the row, pulling curtains over the cages.

Ellis covered the witch up, just as she tried to get him through the glass and slammed her face on it. "Looks painful. But wait till you've had that serum in you a couple hours maybe then you'll brighten up. Who knows, maybe you'll even stop cryin."

"sleep is honestly the first thing they seem to do." Woad sighed. "When we gave them the serum, the commons all woke up for an hour or two, and then crashed on the mats we gave them. We've got a busy night my boy. I need a set of strong arms and a much stronger back."

Woad flicked the curtains down one by one. It was a bad time for their tank to bite it, right when they were busy like this. If he could slow decomposition until the following day he'd be golden. H Doe lifted his nose a couple minutes later, just before Ellis came in with hot bone broth. "A shame this stuff is so hard to get now. Mosta the critters we'd have used are gone."

"A gator or two, actually. They come up from the swamps because of the smell of corpses. Our folks at the harbor catch them. There was that longhorn a trader found with his leg cracked. But he was a steer, nothing to do but eat him."

"I thought those were in texas?"

"They are..." H Doe hesitated to drink his bone broth. "... the traders circle the carribean in two directions. One route heads for Florida, coming close to Havanna. Another goes along the coast towards Texas and south America. Virgil goes further, around the Florida panhandle and north to DC, then back again." When H Doe started to drink eagerly from the bowl and it slid he growled in frustration. It slid again, and a third time and then the hunter 'pinned' the bowl with his hands, letting out a smug "rarar."

"Well well..." chuckled Ellis. "learned to use your fingers huh? I don blame you, eatin with your fingers is fun!"

The witch started pawing at the glass, nails scribbling at it.

"she may smell the broth and want something of her own, or she may go to sleep. But I'd say thats a good sign. We'll keep her on IVs tonight." Woad smiled over at Ellis, "you did good. If you want a bit of privacy later tonight, Dani's cot isn't being taken."

"Maybe not tonight." Ellis said quietly, he looked down at H Doe. The hunter eyed him suspiciously, pulling the bowl back from the edge of the cage with his hands. "I don't want your broth, dinners gonna be soon."

Coach joined Rochelle and Lovelace at the back of the admin tower confrence room. "But they... ate?" A skeptical chinese voice asked on the video uplink. Coach counted five or six different monitors, including one that was labeled "Norad." All of the people on them wore military uniforms of some sort.

"Their bodies are so screwed up, we may only get a couple of them to survive. The common infected honestly have better chances of recovery. We're going to build a secondary room downstairs for recovery. But... they may not fully regain their humanity no matter what we do. Its up to the carriers I think. Put them in a heavily fortified self sustaining settlement and set them up for success, and I think they might surprise you." Mercer was saying confidently. "We can't mess this up, every dead human and every infected we can't save means humanity is that much closer to the brink."

"Beijing has already fallen. And the infected are beginning to crop up in our major cities." The man who said that had a monitor that read "Paris" at the bottom of it and a pronounced French accent. "Right now our city is being overrun, we can't even find out how they got in. We thought it hadn't subsumed the old soviet block yet."

"The metro probably."

"I'm not so sure." A brittish voice said quietly. "Except for the US and China, all of our countries have a transportation route in common..."

"Saudi Arabia." muttered Carter in frustration. "A ship ride away through the Suez canal and up the Mediterranean."

"I'm not surprised." A female german accent said irritably. "We all get shipments of cargo by plane and ship directly from the Saudis and we haven't heard from them in quite awhile. All it takes is one infected rat."

"Our government is still identifying people with the carrier gene. We've got about a hundred so far and some sheep and rabbits that had it as well. We're sending them to the north sea on an old oil rig with a seed bank and three years of supplies. Once we get another twenty we'll start populating another oil rig. They're all fairly close together so they have the advantage of trade and mutual defense."

"We've got 50 split up over three submarines." The chinese military representative said quietly. "They know that our country's entire heritage rests with them."

"Its too late for an organized defense gentlemen. Berlin dropped yesterday. I'm locked underground for the duration." The female german voice said primly. "God be with you. We've set up depots and our people are evacuating northeast."

"Ambassador." The brittish accent said quietly. "Send any refugees you evacuate to the oil rigs we're setting up on. The both of you."

"Are you sure admiral?" The german accent asked in surprise.

"yes. We're the great european powers, we grew, allied, fought and reallied again as nations with each other. Its time to fall together."

"You heard the man, get on the radio start directing evacuees towards the ocean." And then. "If you're right Doctor Mercer, the carriers should survive while the others turn one by one?"

"Not always, you need those tests. And they should only let people on with the immunity or carrier gene. Immunity is much rarer but it does exist. We have maybe four people that are completely immune to the green flu out of 400 but the United states has a very varied genome."

"We'll have to do without, but I'm sure my colleagues will be able to be more thorough." The german accent replied.

Coach slipped forwards to see the two who hadn't spoken. Based on history he had a hunch, and it proved correct. Spain and Italy, is what the other two monitors were labeled.

"Do you really think the recovered count is going to be so small Doctor?" The Chinese representative asked quietly.

"I do unfortunately. The green flu is part rabies, nobody survives regular rabies once symptoms appear. The green flu wrecks both the brain and the endocrine system."

"The rabies case in Milwakee?"

"A teenage fluke, and she was brain damaged in the extreme, an infant in a teenager's body. Multiple other doctors tried, their patients were all older and all died. The longer the infected go without getting that serum into them, the greater the odds we aren't getting them back."

"Then we had best get to work." The brittish representative replied. "Godspeed, all of you." And he signed off. One by one the other representatives, except for Norad signed off.

"do you really think its that bleak?" The general on the monitor marked Norad asked.

"Yes sir. The fate of humanity rests in protecting the carriers and restoring as much functionality to the infected as possible so they have a chance of developing antibodies. The process of doing the latter may be painfully slow. And we may not be able to accomodate very many, but we have to try."

"Angel Island on the west coast is setting itself up to try and do the same thing you are." The general said quietly. "Anything else you need?"

"I... I need something... sir..." Rochelle spoke up quietly.

Mercer and Carter moved their chairs out of the way so Rochelle could walk between them. "And you are..."

"My name's Rochelle sir, I am... was... a reporter from Ohio. My parents... they're probably immune. Lovelace and I tried earlier to get a message out to Cleveland but the ozark mountain range is cutting off the signal. Your crew headed there... can you try to radio them... see if they can put up a recruitment beacon?"

"Their next check in is bright and early tomorrow, 0600 mountain. We should have an answer for you by 0900 your time."

"Thank you sir... I know they're probably dead but..."

"Serve and protect Rochelle. Serve and protect." The General responded with a polite nod. "My condolences if they didn't make it."

"General, we should try to extend the invitation as far north and south as possible. Surely national boarders don't count now." Carter said quietly.

"They do and don't... anybody from canada or mexico wants to join us I don't see the problem or the point of throwing them back out there. Maybe someday but not now. I'll relay it north, I think there are a couple of mounties still surviving in the forests. good night..." With that, Norad signed off.

"So we may lose most of Berlin... and all of Beijing... and their bunkers may well have been contaminated." Carter sighed. "Should have had Nick come and start watching the german's face. I think its already in her bunker and she's expecting it to fail soon."

"Do you really think it came to Europe on a ship?" Coach asked worriedly.

"All it takes is one infected rat and a large enough population of them to keep the infection hot for the journey." Mercer shuddered. "Our world stops without oil and coal flowing through it to specific strategic points. The disease getting into one of those... eyeballing the problem without the SIR equation it looks right."

"SIR equation?" Rochelle tilted her head curiously. She caught onto things fairly quickly as a reporter. "I agree with Carter's assessment though, the german representative was way too tense even under the circumstances, and when the UK representative offered to take german carrier refugees into their project the look of relief on her face was way too strong. I think she knows she's on borrowed time and needed something to hope for."

Mercer sighed. "So do I Rochelle, we all need hope. The SIR equation is used to determine the spread and infection rate of a disease. All I get is bad news most days. I get dispatches day after day, usually by old AM radio, about places that are falling and fighting the disease. We're just lucky the government managed to shutter the nuclear plants without them melting down. And then there's the genetic diversity needed... you yank every mammal out of the ecosystem you're going to get some crazy results. And the loss to the livestock that helped to sustain us and strengthen our immune systems as a species... future generations will be much more vulnerable to disease, their immune systems respond more slowly."

"Wait that last bit makes no sense." Coach shook his head. "How could farm animals make our immune systems stronger?"

"Because disease goes back and forth from humans to animals and each time both humans and animals learn what that disease organism looks like and are able to pass that information on to the next generation. Because of modern healthcare, those of us in the developed world actually started to see our immune systems weaken somewhat because of the extreme cleanliness of our society and the lack of animal to human transmissions. For example, we have some of the highest rates of allergies compared to developing countries. asthma, auto immune disorders, even cancers, they all stem from the immune system not being able to identify what's harmful and what's not properly. That lack is what doomed the native americans, a scenario I'm desperate to prevent in our colony's future generations, they started with less than a hundred people who crossed the Bering strait, and as a result when smallpox came, 90% of them died. We need that diversity and that experience to survive."

Lovelace's relief came running in. "Doc, Adam one of our traders just radio'd this report in. Houston is burning and Galveston is swarmed with commons. Three vessels ETA one week, each of them with at least one refugee. Some of the ones they took on board are turning."

"Right, have blood serum ready to ship. We might be able to nip the infection in the bud when it sets in, before the damage gets too bad. Have them turn on their GPS markers and send a rescue vessel out to meet them. We have one equipped with refrigeration lets use it to shorten the time they're infected and see what happens. Are they equipped to confine infected?"

"Commons yes, anything larger than a hunter forget it."

"Bring sedatives, and make sure you have something to send them food wise for their trouble."

"yes ma'am." Lovelace hurried into the radio room, Rochelle after him in time to hear. "Colony this is the One 4 All do you copy? over." It sounded like Louis! The radioman nudged Rochelle with her elbow to encourage her to pick up.

"This is Colony we copy. What's your status One 4 All?" Rochelle's hands shook in excitement.

"Hey is that Rochelle? Hi Rochelle!" She could hear a scuffle for the reciever as Francis grabbed it. "Hey you should see what's cooking down in Havana. We thought we'd get some of that famous cuban spice but the place is swarming with infected. I counted a tank, two witches, and a dozen other specials on shore in the space of an hour. There is no freakin place for us to pull in Ro! The tank shoved a bunch of commons off the shore trying to get us! He even threw one at us! Can't reach of course..."

"Good to hear your voice Francis, sure sounds like a party." Rochelle chuckled. "I'll make a note in the logs."

"I'm just glad you made it to Colony. Not my cup of tea, too many soldiers, I hate the army! But the people there aren't bad... I just hate the army. Its safe though, and they really seem serious about trying to build a town there!"

Rochelle took her finger off the button long enough to giggle. "I'm training under the radio operator there, Lovelace."

"Oh yeah the weedy guy with the epic Batman collection! He had some good stuff! Listen, the wind's picking up Ro we gotta hustle! I'll keep my ears open for that lovely voice of yours."

Rochelle turned pink around the ears. "Godspeed Francis."

"God got nothin to do with it, take care!" That last bit was gruff, like Francis didn't want his survival to be a matter of luck. But then again, when you thought about it in the context of the pandemic the thought of divine intervention or retribution was actually pretty terrifying.

Coach touseled Rochelle's hair. "Hey, you got to see that bikerman again. Good for you."

"Yeah... I'm satisfied Coach. And Francis sounds like he's getting along alright."

"Good things are worth waiting for girl." Coach put an arm around Rochelle's shoulders and when they passed Lilly he put the other arm around the Nurse's waist. "And speaking of good things... do I smell fresh bread?"

"better... fish burgers." Lilly beamed. "I know the smell of the oil anywhere."

It wasn't fish burgers. It was hushpuppies and coleslaw made from collard greens. "ho baby." Coach grinned from ear to ear.

"Well they changed it up. This is a nice surprise." Lilly beamed. "Coach I have to have a word with some of the foster parents taking care of my students. You're gonna have to eat alone tonight."

"Alright, have a good night Lilly."

Rochelle watched him sigh fondly as Lilly walked away. "Hey... you gonna make your move?"

"I'm just enjoying myself..." Coach chuckled. "Ro I left family, colleagues and students behind... I don't have to hurry and I don't want to." He ruffled her hair paternally. "Hey, looks like Nick and Lovelace found a spot, but i don't see Mari or Ellis any..."

Ellis ran in then with Mason riding on his back horsey style. "Yaaaay! Elli Elli giddyap giddyap!" Ellis laughed and neighed, even making clopping noises with his tongue and cheek.

Rochelle laughed, grabbing her tray and falling into the food line. Mason slid off of Ellis' back and ran into the kitchen, then back out again with a little container of hush puppies and a container of coleslaw. Rochelle could see a pair of arms of one of the kitchen staff gently pushing him out. Mason ran over to the table where the leaders sat, and Mercer, grinning tenderly, pulled out a chair to make room for him as he clung to her side.

Ellis slipped into line behind Rochelle, chuckling. "See? He's not creepy, just needs a little love thats all."

"How are things down in the lab?"

"Woad dubbed the new witch in the serum group 'Morgain.' He gave her warm milk with a little ginger and a spoonfull of sugar but she wouldn't drink it just yet. H. Doe is paying way more attention to us than I like but I can't tell if that means he's changin in his head or what." Ellis shook his head. "And that Mass spectrometer of Woad's is just plain wrecked. Somethin chewed the wires up, a couple of the circuit boards shattered. It needs parts from another one."

"The generators didn't set off the infected did they?"

"kinda... but not severely... they didn't start throwing themselves at the glass if thats what you mean." Ellis shrugged. "They just got restless. We had to cover the witch's cage. And the tank... the one they had in the control group before the one we saw them catch, died. Woad had him moved to a spare walk in freezer so he can focus. But with all the nurses down there going every which way..." They took a seat with Nick, and Coach joined them a moment later.

Lovelace was shaking his head at Nick. "No no, it appeared at around the same time in different cities all over Europe. But Rochelle was pretty sure listening to the german representative... we won't be hearing from them for much longer."

"Her face was a mile long Nick." Rochelle piped up.

"If you have a video log I can go over it with you Lovelace, coach you on reading their body language."

"Could you?"

"yeah but not tonight, i have to have my head shrunk by the town witchdoctor." Nick grumbled. "I hate people poking around in my head. If telepathy were real, I'd have to shoot anybody that had it, because I HATE people poking around in my business. They always put it back on mommy and daddy. How many folks have broken homes that grow up to be fucking normal?"

"Thats a new one..." A voice behind him chuckled. "Witch doctor? By the way Nick your suit's slated to be cleaned tomorrow. I still think bluejeans and a button down would be better for day wear, that poor thing has been through enough. Coach I can clean your jersey too while I'm getting Nick's done." Nick jumped a mile when he realized Mari had crept up behind him.

Nick's mouth opened and shut and opened again, his cheeks red with embarassment that Mari had heard him.

"What about my bullshifter's shirt? its my favorite." Ellis asked plaintively. "I really wanna wear it if there's a big raid gonna go down. I'm totally going. I have to make sure Woad gets his parts for his lab stuff."

"You're gonna have to talk to Tommy then over at the admin table." Mari pointed him out. "But there's usually a sign up sheet out the morning after its decided. And I can clean your hat as well as your shirt." Mari promised. "The laundry is kind of a girls club kinda thing, even the female scientists drop in now and again. If its not the wash boards and hand cranks its keeping the water kettle full so we have hot water to sterilize the clothes with. But we have to meet tonight... we girls... to plan out what we're gonna do, so I'll see you later... handsome."

"Wow..." Nick's eyes sparkled for a moment. "What a woman..." He ahermed self consciously, realizing he was acting like a smitten teenager.

Coach chuckled. "Its alright Nick..."

The meal was nearing its end, plates of snicker doodles were being passed around, and Carter stood up to address the colony. "Sign up sheets for a raid on Saint James Cancer Hospital will be placed out at 0600 tomorrow morning here in the mess. Against my better judgement, Woad and Mercer have convinced me to lead the mission. Com and mechanic office representatives are required, and every team must have a heavy gunner. Apprentices under the age of 18 are not allowed on this mission. No exceptions." A loud groan of frustration came from the teenage table. "The reason why we've decided to go ahead despite the danger is because an injured carrier surfaced and turned out to have a rare transmittable tumor from a smoker. The case was bad enough that his leg had to be amputated to keep the tumor from spreading. This is not normal in so far as we know, but people on watch are to keep their distance from smokers as best they can and monitor their health. We need to retrieve cancer drugs from the pharmacy there just in case the tumor transmitted further. Now I believe Doctor Woad has an update on his research?" Randy sat down, tilting his head at the coroner.

"Right then..." Woad stood up. "Thank you town watch for collecting specimens for me this afternoon. I'm quite happy with the amount that were gotten. The behavior of subject labeled H Doe continues to display a shift in behavior towards being calmer and more cautious. He's begun mimicking human behavior and most importantly he and all the infected in the first serum group started drinking fluids and eating soft food. With this shift, I feel its safe for production of a secondary holding facility in one of the hollowed out rooms under the complex. This will house infected being treated with Mercer's blood serum. The work will be paid for in the usual supply chits and cash." Nick preened a little at Woad's thank you. Coach elbowed him gently to remind him not to be so full of himself. "Now Nora my dear, I believe you have a final update for us." Woad sat down and Mercer rose to speak.

"I'm proud to announce that two new carrier colonies are being established. One on an oil rig off the shores of the UK in the North Sea, one on Angel Island off the coast of San Francisco. This is following confirmed reports of special infected in the sierra nevada range. Norad has found a full team of carriers among their number and will be gathering data on the damage on a path from them to us and feeding that data in both directions, north to Cheyenne Mountain, south to us. We have confirmation of the loss of the cities of Galveston, Houston, Texas City, Moore, Kansas City, Chicago, and Las Vegas in the United States, Havanna in Cuba, San Juan in Puerto Rico and Toronto and Montreal in Canada. Combat in the cities of Shanghai, Berlin, Madrid and Paris are ongoing, Rome is having sporadic cases of the Green Flu crop up, and the infection is expected to worsen. We've confirmed the death of the German chancelor and the Brittish and French Prime Ministers. The Pope in Vatican City is presumed to be in hiding and noone has yet been able to confirm his status. Status is also unknown of the Saudi royal family, but Ras Tenura oil terminal is overrun with the infected."

"Oh boy..." Rochelle groaned. Many people were bowing their heads sadly at the loss of some of the great cultural centers or loved ones or favorite vacation spots in the caribean.

"Ras Tenura's a bad one. I wouldn't fight there if you paid me in solid gold." Nick shook his head. "Texas city's another bad one, and the oil terminal in Houston. It was bad before but..."

"I'm assuming that means no more gas out west?" Ellis asked worriedly.

"Oh its worse. Texas City was the most prepared city in america for a reason. Oil refineries, chemical plants, hell, back in the 40s the place was almost wiped out by a fertilizer fire." Rochelle shook her head. "And Ras Tenura... I know a guy who did a story there. All the oil saudi arabia produces goes through Ras tenura. They have miles of giant tanks of oil the size of like... ten houses."

"One misplaced shot, one dodged spitter loogie, one wrong move with a molotov or explosive or fire rounds, the place could go up like a monster sized bomb." Nick shivered in fear. "Never, not going there ever."

"Please everyone, listen to me, I won't keep you much longer because of the nature of this announcement." Doctor Mercer raised her voice a bit. It took a few minutes, but eventually the crowd settled. "Because of this, our work is more important than ever. This is not the time to let our guards down even though we're soon to not be alone. We are the example and we must continue to be. Old hostilities and social classes will only tear us apart. Fear will tear us apart. We are strong when we stand together and stand up to the infected. If we continue to be so, and set the example, the other colonies will follow us. If anything, we have an even broader united front to present to the infection. This virus is not going to end us. We will survive. Whatever it takes."

"And what it takes is starting over. Already, its been proven, letting go of our past social divisions, our expectations for the future pre infection, allows us to prosper. Using our higher wisdom, you know, that grey stuff between our ears." That got a nervous chuckle from the gathered survivors. "Is the way forward, observe, evaluate, and create for yours and our survival. It may not be the future we invisioned for ourselves when we were young, but we DO have a future!"

"Here here!" One of the guards cheered, pounding the table eagerly for emphasis. Others took up the cheer or raised cups and mugs and cans of soda or beer.

"Now to recap the raid details before I let you all go for the evening. The sign up sheets for the hospital run will be up tomorrow morning after breakfast. We're barring that mission to those apprentices under the age of 18. Its dangerous, we don't want to risk our younger members if we don't have to. We have slots for certain specific skills or fighting styles open. The public briefing will be tomorrow morning after breakfast right here. Now... I bid you all goodnight." Mercer sat down at her position at the admin table, sipping a cup of tea quietly.

Nick peered at the clock above the admin table, trying to see the time. "Crap its almost 7."

"Have fuuuuuun." Rochelle teased.

"Shut up." Nick snapped. "Fuck and with Ras Tenura overrun... I mean Havana's a bad enough loss. All that lovely food and cigars to go with the night life." He strode away, grumbling.

"Shame about Havanna Cuban food's always fulla life." Coach sighed wistfully. "There's some history there you know. When the soviet union fell they stopped exporting oil to Cuba. Castro could have done a lot of things, but what he did was let small scale agriculture go wild. Decades later, Cuba's got beautiful colorful markets and flavorful spices to show for it all."

"Ashes to ashes I suppose. Sorry Coach." Ellis said consolingly.

"Hey Ellis!" Martin bounded over eagerly with four plates of cookies. "I wanted to talk to you in the library today."

"Oh yeah sorry I found the name of someone I know on the sign out list. I got real excited." Ellis chuckled. "She's pretty and one helluva shot. Badass attitude too! Not everyone's willing to mouth off to Nick."

"Really? Thats cool but um... I kinda need your help with something."

"Okay shoot."

"I'm trying to get the admin to approve this experiment but since I'm an apprentice I have to try harder to get noticed. I don't have college you see, I'm only 17." Martin explained. "I have to come up with some sort of arguement as to why I should be allowed. Really Mercer's serum and agriculture related things typically get priority over microbes that don't have anything to do with the green flu."

"I see... so whatddyou need?"

"Help finding some major scientific figure from days of yor, hopefully one that studied microbes, that did something stupidly dangerous to prove their theories were right, something no scientist today would do because of ethical reasons. I have to prove that you don't have to be perfect personality and education wise to do science stuff as long as you know the scientific method."

"So who did you look at so far?" Rochelle asked curiously as Coach muttered a thanks for the sweet and headed off after Lilly.

"Well... I looked into the guys that proved yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes. I also looked into Tuberculin, but neither was really what I was looking for. The guy that actually took the risk with yellow fever died proving it. And Koch was um... kinda foolish with his handling of tuberculin but not in the way that I think would make an impression. I need someone relevant to studying the green flu."

"What are you hoping to test with this?" Rochelle asked. Ellis leaned in a bit closer as Martin pulled out a notebook.

"You're... you might laugh. Ellis is cheery and kinda... no offense, ignorant, so I figured he wouldn't judge." Martin hesitated a little, looking over at Ellis for reassurance. Ellis nodded encouragement.

"I won't, plus as a reporter I hear things. I'm a real good listener." Rochelle offered with a warm smile.

Martin took a deep breath, opened his notebook, and blurted out. "I want to test the effects of probiotics on the infected."

The two of them looked at each other. Rochelle got a crafty smile on her face. "I think I know just the historical figure for you to dredge up dirt on. Louis Pasteur."

"Wait why him?"

"I'm not spoiling it. Lets just say that he took risks developing a certain vaccine that would make Ellis' jaw hit the floor."

"Seriously?" Ellis arched an eyebrow. "All the shit Keith pulled on a regular basis, I highly doubt that."

"Trust me... this was stupid." Rochelle smirked. "But I'm not gonna spoil it. Just dig through Pasteur's biography. Martin I want you to actually do the reading and research."

The boy nodded. "Thank you Rochelle." He grinned. "Ellis lets meet tomorrow okay?" He grabbed his notebook and ran off, presumably for the library.

"Sure thing!" Ellis called after him. "I'm 'cheery and too ignorant to judge' huh?" He asked in a lower voice.

Rochelle laughed. "I'm sure he was trying to put it nicely. But its more whats in your heart thats your strength rather than what's between the ears yes." She smiled up at him. "But you're like the little brother I never had and I wouldn't trade you for all the gold in the world." She gave him a friendly nudge with her shoulder. "Just rely on me and Nick to be the brains and you be our heart and I think as a group no matter what we'll be fine. Okay?"

"sure Rochelle, but you... don't hold it against me if I spend a lot of time in the library or listening to Doc Woad. I don't like being 'too ignorant to judge.'" Ellis sounded disappointed.

"not at all..." Rochelle sighed as she walked away. "I have 'homework' to do." She added with a laugh. "Got to review all the ham radio lingo."

Ellis decided he was going to check on the infected in the serum trial and maybe see if Woad needed anything that night. After all he had to get all the infected mri'd while they had the machine didn't he?

Sure enough, the Doctor handed Ellis an M16 on the way to the lab. "I need a hand my boy, but if you last the whole night, I've got a chit in it for you."

"Sure thing doc. Always something interesting at your place." Ellis slung the rifle by the strap over his shoulder and shuffled off down the hall after the elderly Coroner.