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Major was glad today that training didn't require him to actually use his own muscles—Liv had had a vision in the middle of their latest field-digging session yesterday and run off to tell Clive about it, which had left Ravi doing all the metal detecting and Major doing all the digging. They'd dug up half the damn field so far and found nothing but a whole mountain of beer cans. If the dead guy they were hunting for hadn't been the only way to find a cure and keep him from having to turn back into a zombie, Major would have strongly encouraged Ravi to give the whole thing up as a futile exercise—or bad info. But as it was, he had little choice other than to trust Ravi, and by extension, Ravi's source, and keep on digging up that stupidly large field.
It was almost a relief to be back to his real job—no zombies in sight, just Vaughn du Clark, pushing himself to the max, as he liked to say.
"Thirteen," Major said, in his deliberately patient schoolteacher voice, which he used because he knew it bugged du Clark but he was too breathless to say so. The stack dropped with a clank, then began to rise again as du Clark pushed himself to do one more. Major had to give it to the guy—he didn't go easy on himself. He expected a lot from others, but he led by example and exceeded his own expectations more often than not. "Fourteen. You got it, one more."
The stack crashed back and du Clark panted, clearly close to hitting the wall, if he wasn't there already.
"One more," Major repeated. du Clark pushed, blowing his cheeks out with the effort. That was bad form, as far as Major was concerned—breath control was key—but it was the last one, so he'd let it slide this time. He actually kind of enjoyed the contortions du Clark's face made in the process. "Push." With a loud groan, du Clark straightened his arms all the way and then let the weights fall. Major would have liked to see him use a more controlled drop, but it was what it was. "Fifteen! Way to work, V.d.C.! Good guns, son." He held out a hand for a fist bump, genuinely pleased with today's workout.
du Clark tried to reach Major's fist and gave up, chuckling a little. "I can't lift my fist that high."
Major laughed, too. "Well, we're doing something right. But—it's time to kick things up a notch." He noted the set on his clipboard, then bent to reach into his bag, pulling out the little something he had brought with him and handing it to du Clark.
"No," du Clark said, taking it and studying it. "My own fitness band?" He slid his hand through the blue plastic circle and fastened the band around his wrist. "Guess this means we're going steady, huh?"
"He said yes!" Major quipped, pumping his fist in the air, and they both laughed.
Settling the band more comfortably on his wrist, du Clark said, "Hey, you know, I really appreciate your dedication. To my training, and to your extracurricular duties. I mean, you are really plowing through your list."
Major smiled, although he did have some concerns about that. Those freezers were filling up, and he wasn't certain how many unique ways there were to get to the storage units, or if he could continue to shake whatever surveillance there might be. He had been lucky so far … he just had to keep being lucky, but one slip, one wrong move, and he and all those zombies—and Liv—would be done for.
An intercom beeped, and a woman's voice—not Rita's, thankfully—came through. "Mr. du Clark? Dr. Lockett is anxious to show you something."
"Yeah, tell him I'll be down there when I can." du Clark took the clean towel Major tossed him and wiped off his face.
"Down where?" Major asked. "Thought this was the lowest level." He was trying to be casual about it, but he worried he might have overshot. He really should have taken that improv class in college as an elective, he thought, not for the first time. It would have come in handy in his old life as a counselor, too.
du Clark looked up at Major over the towel. "I got a lab in Tacoma." Yeah, he hadn't bought the casualness. Damn it.
"Tacoma's, what, forty miles away? Seems like a good goal for the week." Major clapped his hands, reverting to his trainer persona—which was, after all, easier to maintain than the fake innocent act. "To the treadmill! Come on."
Taking a deep breath, du Clark got to his feet, following Major to the machine in the corner.
Major set it for a steady pace and the full forty miles, climbing up on the second machine to cut down on any more potential need to talk. So far so good—du Clark hadn't seen anything strange about the fitness band, and hopefully he would brush aside any strangeness he found in Major asking about the lab as well. And if Major could find out what Max Rager was doing in their secret lab, and maybe bring some information home to Ravi, then maybe they would be that much closer to a real cure, a lasting cure, and that much closer to life going back to something approaching normal. He wasn't sure if he enjoyed that line of thought or du Clark's labored breathing and increasingly pained face as the session went on more.