“Yeah, he pissed off the captain.”
Man, I had so many questions. Did Alfred piss off Keller before or after he died? Who threw a zombie in a prison cell? How was Logan so nonchalant about it?
Instead of flooding him with questions, I prodded around the wound. He had definitely been bitten twice: once by a small set of jaws, and then by someone with a much larger mouth. I rinsed out the wounds carefully with a rag dipped in saline, then hunted around in my kit for antibiotics. “How did this happen? You have two of them on you?”
He shook his head. “The kid latched onto me first. Should’ve popped him before he came at me, but…kids are…he’s a kid, you know?”
I had popped a Ralphie lookalike in the lake in Old Town Muldoon, so I just nodded. “So Big Poppa came after you while you were distracted with the kid?”
“No…the adult came after me…it was odd. She went for the exact same spot as the kid. Like she smelled the blood or something.” He peered up at me. “Ever heard of that?”
Doctor Samuels and everyone else I talked to had been adamant that the undead could track via sound, but nothing else—and that they definitely were not bloodhounds. I had no idea if that were the case, and I wasn’t exactly willing to go out there and do heavy experimentation on them. I liked science and all, but not that much.
I considered the wounds. If revenants were going after blood now…
No. Not happening.
“I’m sure it was a coincidence,” I said.
He sat quietly for a few moments as I mopped up his arm and started repairing the worst of the damage. “Gloria Fey, huh?” he finally asked. “Wanted traitor to the good old United States?”
“Does the United States exist anymore?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, as if sizing me up.
“That’s an honest question,” I added. “I only know about the Midlands Cluster. I guess there were things happening all over but I haven’t heard anything definite…”
“Neither have the rest of us. Maybe we weren’t supposed to know.”
I couldn’t tell if he believed that sentiment or if he was just trying to probe a little deeper into what I believed. “Gloria was doing what she thought was right,” I said.
“Aren’t we all.”
I held up the scissors. “You really want to sass me while I’m holding these?”
“Hey, I got no opinion on this. I’m just doing my job, feeding the people and sometimes training the fake soldiers.”
I cut a length of gauze. “Fake soldiers? Is that a thing now?”
“We were training up a militia for a while. Durkee asked anyone with some gunning experience to step up and sign on, so my buddy and I did.” He paused. “But Keller didn’t like it, so now I’m on grub duty. Not as much fun.”
I lowered my voice. “Can we get something besides pastrami?”
“Not really.”
Hmph.
So Keller didn’t like militia. I could sort of see why not; he seemed like the kind of guy who needed to control every little thing, and citizen soldiers—or citizen zombie hunters, or whatever the militia was—could quickly spiral out of his grasp. Hammond had allowed the small Elderwood militia to do its own thing for the most part, provided Tony and Corporal Poltava, its leaders, didn’t ask them to do anything too insane. Keller would never permit it. No wonder he’d treated Tony with what seemed like near contempt for his so-called rank.
I paused in my work. “So what did you do before you were feeding the hungry, Mr…?”
“Logan. Specialist Logan Andrews.” He shot me what I suspected was his best smile.
I went back to my repairs. “And what did you specialize in?”
“Sniping.”
I stopped working on him. “You’re a sniper?”
“I am.”
“What the hell are you doing on a food truck? You should be out sniping the undead!”
Logan Andrews shrugged. “Honey, I’ve been asking myself that same question. I just follow orders.”
I supposed there was every possibility that this guy was not exactly the world’s best sniper. Still, Hammond had called up anyone who could hold a gun semi-properly and sent them on patrols and along the guard towers of Camp Elderwood. It had just seemed sensible. Why yank Logan off zombie detail entirely just because the militia wasn’t around?
More and more about Keller just didn’t entirely jive with me, but maybe that’s why I wasn’t running refugee camps.
“So, Logan Andrews, how often does…this…” I gestured to the tent full of injured soldiers, “…happen?”
His smile faded. “We’ve had security breaches right along, but lately they’ve been happening more and more often, and the city’s too damn big. We can’t patrol every fence we put up.” He watched me drip antibiotics into the wound. “Is that actually going to help?”
“You’re not going to turn into a revenant,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
I considered the wound—still fresh, still easily treated. “Ninety-nine percent sure.”