“Hey,” the soldier said. “Maybe just pretend to do something? Make me feel better.”
Shit. “I’m sorry,” I said, opening my kit and taking stock of its contents. “I’m new, I…here, I’m going to give you…” I spied the painkillers in their own little section. “Has anyone given you anything?”
“The other medic gave me lidocaine. But he didn’t come back.”
That explained why she was talking coherently to me and not passed out from the pain. A bowl of saline and several clean strips of cloth were laid out on a tray next to the bed, which indicated to me that the other medic, whoever he was, had at least been intending to clean her up. I set my kit down next to the tray, dipped one of the cloths into the saline, and studied the wound, trying to come up with an angle of attack. With all the blood and junk clogging her hand, though, I couldn’t begin to figure out where the damage was.
I mentally shrugged and dove right in, first dabbing gingerly with the cloth, then dunking her hand into the bowl entirely.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“About four hours ago.”
Damn. That was plenty of time to cure the average zombie bite, but it looked like she’d taken additional trauma to the hand. Clumps of dried blood eased away, along with what I thought might have been one of her fingernails.
I stomped down my revulsion and instead tried to focus on the specifics. “How many revenants?”
“One.”
I frowned. A ghoul could take a chunk out of a person, but I’d never seen one mangle a hand this way—especially not on a seasoned soldier. I could feel multiple bite marks dotting her hand, of varying size and depth. This seemed like an extended period of munching had gone on, and most people, fearful though they may be, don’t just let a dead man chew on them. I had only seen this sort of wound on those who had been pretty much devoured by a gaggle of the undead.
I glanced at the girl again. She lacked the hardness around her eyes that I’d seen Hammond’s people, and I figured she might be around twenty-two. Maybe not a seasoned soldier, then. “Was there more than one?” I asked.
She shifted slightly, her gaze flicking around the tent, and I knew right away this wasn’t your average zombie bite.
When things first went to hell, Elderwood had adopted a sort of system to get by: Don’t ask questions you don’t need to ask. That often included foregoing important information while working on someone for fear of upsetting them. Gradually, as things grew more dire, the strange etiquette fell by the wayside, and I consciously shoved it away now. “Hey, Private, I need to know what happened in order to treat you. Was it more than one?”
“No,” she said. “There was just the one…the one zombie…he bit my thumb thereabouts.”
She pointed into the bowl. I quite frankly couldn’t tell what she was pointing at through the bloody saline, but nodded anyway. “Were you passed out?” That was the only way I could think of a revenant using a hand as a chew toy.
Zombies don’t go for chew toys.
Every ghoul I’d ever seen chewed when there was nothing in its mouth…but once it got hold of meat, it did the human thing and focused on eating. And people didn’t just sit there and let themselves be eaten alive. They yanked their hands away, fled the premises. The sheer number of bites on her said she’d done neither.
I lifted the soldier’s hand out of the saline and stared down at the torn flesh before blood began welling up again. At least five bite marks, all of the same size. The same ghoul, biting multiple times, probably with great speed. I even pulled a front tooth out and set it down, offering her a queasy smile. “Look, he left you a souvenir.”
She blanched. I blanched. What was I thinking, calling it a souvenir? Get your shit together, Vibby.
The doctor would need to take off her middle and ring fingers; they had been gnawed to the bone. Very un-zombie-like; a typical ghoul would have torn the fingers right off.
Was this some new sort of revenant? I wanted to know about it, so I could more effectively run away.
“Good fucking God.” Lattimore had returned to us, and I could see her rethinking her plan as she took in the extent of the damage. “All right, I’m taking this one to a private room. She doped up?”
“Lidocaine,” I said. “I was about to refresh it.”
“I’ll do it. Private, come with me, we’ll get you checked out. Vibeke, go help the guy in green over there. He’s got a nasty bite and something else on top of it.”
“Right.” If nothing else, I’d gotten pretty good at following orders.
The soldier waved at me with her good hand. “Thanks for your help, Vibeke.”
Maybe it was the painkiller creating a pleasant buzz in her system, or maybe she was just a nice girl. But someone who’d managed to lose half her hand to what looked like a bad fight with a garbage disposal had taken the time to thank me before heading off to near-certain amputation.
For a few seconds I almost let myself feel like I’d done something useful.
Chapter Four