“There was a spare out in the old library,” she said, her voice quieter now. As if she were testing the waters. “I guess no one retrieved it?”
Our eyes met. Something shifted in the air; an uncertainty had come into it, a sort of concern. The pieces weren’t fitting together quite right.
“Was your radio broken?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Hammond was worried about you guys. He sent us to find out what happened—if it was a broken radio or if the city fell.”
“Vibeke,” someone called out. I knew without a doubt it was Lattimore, stalking through the tents to ensure I wasn’t fraternizing.
I sighed. “Maybe we can talk about this later,” I said. “Have you been exposed to anyone who’s sick?”
“Well, everyone’s been exposed to something,” she said. “Look at this place. We’re all in insanely close contact with each there. If something can pass through air, everyone’s going to get it.”
She made a good point.
Lattimore’s instructions had been pretty simple: Anyone suspected of harboring contagions must be quarantined. That hardly seemed fair to Alyssa, who might respond well to hot tea and a good night’s sleep, but if she was sick and I let her roam freely around Hastings, I was going to wind up right back in prison.
“Alyssa, I’m going to have to admit you,” I said.
She nodded. “I figured. At least I won’t have to clean out latrines, right?”
She spoke with false cheer. I recognized it; I’d displayed enough of it myself in recent months. Might as well suck it up and put on a smile—why let everyone else around you know how badly you’re hurting?
I placed a blue tag around her ankle, and another around her wrist.
“Tagging me already?” she asked. “Don’t I have to die first?”
“This is so they can see you coming from either way,” I said, adding the information to her chart.
She did not appear convinced, but she nodded, and started picking at her nails. “Gotcha…what was Elderwood like?”
“Well, they built the refugee area around the old college campus,” I said. “More like a really huge campground. Seemed more like something you’d see in…I don’t know…a proper battlefront, I guess.”
“The zombie battlefront,” she muttered.
“That, too.” I saw Dax slipping in from the other end of the tent and waved him over. Once he was on his way, I lowered my voice. “Hey. This is a pretty big city. Wouldn’t they have replacement parts, or a replacement radio around somewhere?”
Alyssa laughed, but her merriment quickly dissolved into coughs, making me feel a bit better about admitting her. “Of course,” she said. “I’m sure there’s other radios. Hell, there was an outpost set up in the other side that I know has a working unit, and lots of spare parts.”
“Then why haven’t you…they…”
“Our radio broke when Durkee was running things, and he did send a squad to look,” she said. “They didn’t come back, and then he died, and I guess Keller…I assumed they’d fixed it and you weren’t talking. But maybe Keller just didn’t want to risk more men.”
I tried to see the nobility in that, and almost managed to do it…until I thought of Elderwood, and all the civilians that had died because Hastings had been unreachable.
Hammond, I thought, I hope you’re okay.
“I miss Durkee,” she said after a moment. “Can’t believe they fucking ate him.”
“Sounds like he ran a tight ship.”
Dax arrived, and smiled at the two of us. “Ladies.”
“This is Dax,” I said. “He’ll get you to your bed. He’s also going to clean up that blood when he’s done, isn’t he?”
Dax blanched.
“Isn’t he?” I snapped, suddenly irritated with him.
He grunted something that sounded like assent and helped Alyssa to her feet. Once they had vanished into the labyrinthine maze of the medical complex, I let out a sigh. I was pretty sure I hated triage and really hated spending my time surrounded by the scent of death, of suffering, of all the things that had gone wrong in the world.
I went off in search of my boss, mentally reminding myself to dump bleach on the blood myself if Dax couldn’t bring himself to clean it.
Chapter Seven
By the time my shift ended five hours later, I was covered in blood, guts, and God knew what else. The blood had even seeped through my MEDIC shirt and stained the long-sleeved thermal I wore underneath, and no amount of frantic scrubbing would get them out. If I hadn’t picked up some gnarly infection since the world ended, I damn sure had one now.
Lattimore dismissed me without a second thought. “See you tomorrow,” she said absently, working on some poor sap’s kneecap. In a previous life, I might have offered to help out, but one look at the mess told me this was a case best left to the experts. The dude would probably be dead before morning, and I didn’t want that on my hands.
“I cleaned the blood,” Dax said once I joined him outside the main tent.
Did he expect a medal? “Thanks.”
We stood in silence for a moment.