Author's Note: Stupidly long Hiatus 2 Finished.
Revelations and Stress Relief
Eight
Jake had everyone present packaging weapons and ammunition into crates within the hour, loading them onto helicopters which were constantly arriving from Quarantine Zone Omega. Along with overseeing the operation himself, he also took part, taking pleasure in assuring this massive stock of firepower would not be taken by the EFH. "So, Doctor. You seem to have quite the plan formulating in that head of yours. Care to share it?" Rita asked as she finished loading the last crate onto the current helicopter. Jake cleared his throat and popped his back before starting to answer.
"Of course, my dear Sergeant Kitama. The EFH have numbers on their side, of that there's no doubt. Trying a conventional conflict with the EFH will just result in us exhausting our resources. So the plan is this. Blitzkrieg."
"You're going to rush the EFH's base? Isn't that suicide?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Aye, usually, but I think we need to nip this in the bud before the EFH discover where we're hiding and annihilate us in one fell swoop. So we'll spend only as much time as we need in training and arming before we strike. Plus, there are a few things on the home front I need to take care of, so I need time for that." He watched the helicopter's rotors begin to spin, lifting the massive machine into the air, covering his eyes from the dust which kicked up and waiting as the sound died to manageable levels, he continued. "You don't have to come with us, Staff Sergeant. There's got to be something left for you." Rina smiled a grim smile and shook her head.
"I'm afraid not, Doctor. My parents died well before your little F.E.V. mishap, and I've got no other family. I go where the military sends me, and that's to protect those weapons. As long as those weapons are in Revenant hands, I'll protect the ones who hold them." Jake nodded, giving a happy smile as she spoke, and spoken like a true soldier it was.
"Very well, then Rina. You're more then welcome to join us." Just as the pair were saluting one another, I ambled over from the two feet away I was packaging the last crate, and tapped Jake on the shoulder.
"That's the last of them." I told him in confidence, brushing the dust from my hands.
"Most excellent, Emma. Gather everyone else, including the soldiers from the Quarantine Zone. We'll need all the instructors we can get." I nodded and confirmed, running off to collect the stragglers.
-Quarantine Zone Omega-
"Disney Land?" Rina chuckled as we entered the Quarantine Zone's airspace. The chuckle turned into a full-fledged laugh as it set in. "You set up a safe haven for survivors of a Zombie Apocalypse in DISNEY! That's so rich!" Jake seemed happy with himself and nodded.
"Hey, it was the happiest place on earth, and still is." Jake responded as our pilot gave our landing clearance codes. "We should still have some living quarters for you, so just get with someone and try to find a place to crash. Lots of living areas in the tunnels below the park proper, just so you know."
"What about you, doctor?" Rina started, shuffling a little closer to him. "You need a place to crash?"
"D'eh..." He smiled, rubbing the back of his head. "Trust me, Staff Sergeant, the pass isn't lost on me. I'd like to believe you're just recovering from a short spell of cabin fever. Trust me. You don't want any of me." He looked out the window, unphased by the pass. "Disaster seems to follow my wake..."
We landed a short few minutes later, several mundanes and a couple Revenants unloading our helicopter of it's ballistic load and moving it to where ever they were stockpiling them. As the people assembled aboard the helicopter disembarked, Jake clapped to gather our attention.
"Alright, everyone, listen up. Training begins at dawn, so spread the word to every Revenant and Mundane in the Quarantine Zone, make sure they know. When the shit hits the fan, we'll need every able-bodied soldier we can get, and more. I'll be preoccupying myself in my lab for an hour or so, but please don't interrupt me for that hour. Delicate work requires concentration. Thank you, dismissed." As Jake sauntered away to his lab, Rina walked up to me and crossed her arms.
"Interesting man, that Doctor. Is he always this distant?" I gave a little nod and patted her back.
"That's a story that's going to take a while to tell. Maybe over dinner, what do you say?"
"Love to, I'm starving."
"Hey, Zoey!" I called to the meandering woman by the helicopter. "Come on, let's grab something to eat." Skipping a little to herself, she bound over to us and followed me to our place of food gatherings.
We sat ourselves in the small food court set up at the entrance to the Castle, happily eating the venue of the day (Turkey burgers in three-day old mayonnaise and relish. Not half bad, but not half good either) while Zoey and Rina happily conversed about life in the weapons depot, while I, on the other hand, was busy watching the sun set on the horizon, very much weary of the day's endeavors.
"Emma?" Rina finally asked one moment, snapping me back to reality. "You've not said anything since you started eating... and you've started eating the plate..." I looked at the empty foam plate clenched in my vice-like claws, a large bite mark taken out of the facing side. With a smile, I put the plate down and took the chewed piece from my mouth, discarding it on the corpse of it's parent.
"Sorry, guys..." I responded, rubbing my eyes. "I'm just tired, and I'm thinking too much." Zoey gave me a little hug, squeezing my neck some.
"Yea, it's been a hell of a day, I agree." Rina looked us both over with an understanding glare and nodded.
"So, that makes three of us, then." She laughed as she finished her mediocre burger, leaning as far back as she could in the backless bench. She gave me a bit of a gilded look before continuing to speak. "So, Emma... if you don't mind me asking, what's it like being a Revenant?"
"Mixed feelings." I answered, looking away. "I mean, physically, it feels great. I feel like I could throw a semi truck down the highway, and manage to run to wherever it lands and beat it there... but mentally? I don't know. Jake says I'll out-live any non-Revenant... so he's discouraged any relationships, regardless of how much I've ignored that."
"It's not about how long we live, Emma." Rina spoke in a sage tone, as if she's quoting a movie or something. "It's all about how we use the time we're given. A short life full of love will always be better then a long life devoid of it." I nodded, knowing full-well how true this one, but one thing still bothered me.
"That's true... but a short life full of love will always leave a gap in your heart. The bigger the love, the bigger the gap." Zoey gave me a sad, almost depressed look, as if I was simply reminding her of what's to come. "I'm... sorry, Zoey, I shouldn't have said that."
"No... it's okay. I know it's true... I know it's coming but..."
"I shouldn't have reminded you, I'm sorry." She hid her frown behind it's upside down cousin and hugged me.
"Idiot, stop apologizing." She rubbed my head some in a playful manner.
"You two look like you get along famously." Rina joked, throwing the plate into the nearby trashcan, having finished beriding it of it's shouldered burden of mediocre food. Zoey gave a claiming smile, wrapping me in her strangely powerful arms.
"She's mine." She said unabashed, declaring openly her affection. Rina laughed a cute little titter, covering her mouth with her hand.
"That's so cute! The two of you look like a little Laurel and Hardy sometimes... but you remind me more of Sonny and Cher..."
"Dibs on Sonny and Hardy." I muttered to Zoey, who gave a disappointed glare.
"I wanted to be Sonny..." She muttered through pursed lips, prompting Rina to laugh harder. For a soldier she didn't quite strike me as the stereotypical hard-ass kind. Maybe she just loved life and all it had to offer?
"If... you don't mind me asking, Rina... what happened down in the weapons Depot... I mean... with the Progenitum..." She gave a long, drawn out sigh, her smile fading as the memories returned.
"That... I don't think I can tell you..."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned it..."
"No, I mean I really can't tell you. I was asleep when it happened. From what I heard though, one of the guys stumbled into a sealed room with floor-to-ceiling metal barrels. He opened one, the warning label on the side old and worn, and flooded the entire facility with Progenitum, killing every man in the platoon, from the lowest Private to our commander, Colonel Hillsbrad. I was the highest-ranking survivor, so I was elected as the new leader once we... ugh... got the mess cleaned up. Thankfully, in open air, Progenitum dissipates pretty quickly, so we quarantined the leak to some of the rooms and vented the rest out the top, making the place more or less safe in case we got visitors. The red X marked doors Doctor B was warned about were the quarantined areas. They still had some of the Progenitum in them."
"Progenitum sounds nasty... but... why affect only men?"
"As Jake stated, it was desgined to be used against terrorists in the Middle East... and since women aren't allowed to fight..."
"Pretty solid idea, if you ask me." Rina nodded and gave a grunt.
"Aye, but bloody messy. Man-Gel is not fun to clean up, nor does it smell pretty..." I could imagine what a puddle of gel that was once a man would smell like, but I didn't think I wanted to be exposed to it should I ever come across one. I took a peek at Rina's watch, noting how late it was getting.
"It's just about seven..." I muttered. "Think we should get some sleep?"
"Aye... been a hell of a day, moving and lifting heavy crates. Back's startin' to kill me." She laughed, standing to pop her back. "Starting to feel like an old lady already! Hell, I'm only twenty five..."
"I know how you feel, sister." Zoey muttered, standing with both of us. "I think turning in for both of us is good, let us catch some sleep for tomorrow." We all nodded, Rina giving us a salute and bidding us good night, as Zoey and I went off to catch some sleep, and maybe a little alone time.
-Meanwhile-
I sat staring at the computer screen, the image of my purple hair reflecting off the glowing LCD monitor. I re-read what was on the screen, the layout of an AI compiling itself over and over again, running diagnostic after diagnostic, all coming up the same result. Thinking, I pulled my glasses down my nose, then pushed them back up, repeating a few times to clear my head. Finally the rythmic pulling and pushing of my glasses stopped having the desired effect, finally pulling them off my face and rubbing my eyes with a heavy sigh, smoke billowing from my mouth.
The F.E.V. has changed so much since it's first infection... old strains are mutating into something new, and even Revenants are feeling the change... so why am I still a smoke-blowing freak? Maybe the F.E.V. was too far entrenched into my DNA to change? No... Jake's undergoing some changes himself, as is Emma and Hunter... Maybe there are changes, I just can't see them? Ugh... DAMMIT! Why did we have to do this in the first place...? Disaster follows that man like a plague.
I felt a pair of hands lay across my shoulders, gently squeezing my muscles, releasing the tension of the day and of my life in general. Long, slender fingers moved expertly across my muscles and gently massaged me from within. Pale fingers, long as daggers touched me tenderly as a voice spoke softly in my ear.
"You're working too much..." It was Sakura, her slender fingers working me over from the shoulders down. "You need to take a breather... relax..." Closing my eyes, I rolled my head back, laying it gently on her chest as she worked. The palm of her right hand pressed against my upper back, just between my shoulder blades and rolled slowly clockwise, the thoughts of the day melting into nothing.
"Hmmmm..." Came a pleased moan at her detailed attention. "Damn... you're good..." She gave a laugh to this and continued, a thumb rubbing the back of my neck with a powerful, yet gentle strength behind it.
"Thank you. I was a masseuse before the Infection... And I think you could very much use my talents..." Her hands were golden, moving and stroking in all the right ways, my vision blurred and senses dulled with each motion, slowly carrying me away to a remote location where the stress and ruckus of the Quarantine Zone was a world away.
"What kind of..." I found it hard to talk through the strong sense of euphoria I was experiencing. "What kind of massage do you specialize in...?" I mumbled, rolling my head back and forth.
"Aromatherapy mostly, but I dabbled in Shiatsu and Hot Stone." Her hands went back to my shoulders, both thumbs pressing just on the edge of my clavicles. "I can't do much more with you sitting in the chair, though; if you want more, you'll have to move elsewhere. She lifted her hands, leaving me wanting more, more relief, more comfort.
"Table work?" I asked, slowly pulling myself from my stupor. She gave an acknowledging grunt.
"I have to go grab a few things, so get yourself situated on this table here..." She patted the wooden table. "Oh... and make sure you take off that lab coat of yours..." She paused for a moment. "And... well... everything else while you're at it." She walked out the door to retrieve her things, while I started to strip to my undershirt and jeans, taking a towel and lying it across the wooden table.
She returned a few moments later just as I was situating myself on the table, beet red from the lack of clothing. "Ah, very good. Now, just to lock this door here so we're not interrupted..." There came the click of the door locking as her footsteps moved closer. "Alright, now... close your eyes, relax, and think of happy thoughts. It'll make this next part all the more simpler." She began her work, hands moving expertly down and across my back, finding and unknotting every single tangled muscle I had, and even a few I didn't know were there. Working her way back up, she took my head in her hands and paused for a moment. After a few seconds, I spoke up.
"Something wrong?" She inhaled before answering.
"No... no, sorry... thinking." Lightly but firmly, she turned my head both ways until my neck popped, slightly painful at first but relaxing in the long run. The silence that followed was punctuated by a disturbing feeling of tension in the room, almost as if stress relief wasn't the only thing she had planned. "Doctor, we need to talk after this. I hate to do it, but it may just give you more stress."
"You keep working like this, and I don't care what the hell you have to say... I'm keeping you." She gave a nervous chuckle and continued to work, running a thumb down my spine towards my tailbone.
"I hope you're right..."
-At That Time...-
As I had requested, I wasn't disturbed for the hour I asked for, finding myself staring at a computer screen displaying the genetic makeup of the F.E.V., I smiled. Finally, figured out what the fuck Micheal did to it to mess it up so badly. Isolate the mutagen... isolate the adaptive qualities of it... and boom.
"There you are, beautiful." I muttered to the screen, causing Saline, whom I've been working with for the hour, to walk over.
"Hum? What's this?"
"This, my lovely Saline, is the Mark II F.E.V. I managed to isolate the mutative qualities as well as the adaptive abilities, and created the purest sample of the Virus since the first."
"What's it supposed to do?" I shook my head, pressing the 'synthesize' button on the screen, a progress bar appearing.
"Only one way to find out."
Ending Author's Note: YEP! BACK! Admit it, you thought I tabled this story, didn't you? Glad to prove you wrong. More of a plot back story chapter here, but hey, they're important. I'll be writing more shortly, so stay tuned to Cry Witch II: The Revenant Wars.