“Why?” I asked, dreading his answer.
Renati swayed back and forth ever so slightly. Low blood sugar looked more and more likely. “I’ve run a few tests when I can,” he said. “Not many. Lattimore doesn’t like it. But occasionally…it seems they are coming back faster and faster. And I’m concerned.”
As one should be.
“I’ll see what I can find, drug-wise,” he said.
He hustled back into the depths of his lab before I could question him further, or even really process what he’d just told me. I clutched the boxes and hurried out the door, back into the bleak outdoors and the tent setup. Logan and the other soldier had migrated away from the tent, toward the edge of the hastily constructed courtyard. Maybe someone had yelled at them about the cigarette.
I took a deep breath and stepped back inside the tent.
I fell into a sort of rhythm after a while, mechanically taking vitals and dosing people while my brain dwelled on the fate of our cohorts.
The night before, the decision to free our intrepid reporter and her cameraman had seemed like an easy one. But as I moved from patient to patient, trying to figure out a plan that didn’t end up with all of us dead or undead or worse, Operation: Rescue Gloria and Vijay swiftly ballooned into a logistical nightmare.
Some wild, obviously deranged part of me thought it would be easy. We’d get our guns, break into the prison compound or wherever Keller kept them, free them, and then shoot our way out. It was what Bruce Willis would do, after all.
Except rescues don’t entirely work like that. Even if we could find our firearms, I knew damn well I didn’t have enough ammunition to take on all of Keller’s men. Not to mention if I didn’t keep up my daily practice I turned into a pretty poor shot. We might do okay against the civilians out in the city—civilians who, let’s face it, had so far displayed next to zero proficiency in anything remotely resembling post-apocalyptic stress—but a squad of trained soldiers would turn us all into ground beef.
That, or we’d wind up in the zombie arena.
No, we needed a better sort of rescue. We needed big guns, or at least some soldiers willing to not blast our heads off when they realized what we were doing. How loyal was Keller’s inner circle? Could we sway some of them?
You’re a writer, not an action star. I couldn’t think of any situation that didn’t end with me being devoured alive by a roomful of angry undead or going down in a hail of bullets.
I kept thinking about it all the way through my morning shift, where I administered painkillers, antibiotics, and sedatives. The specific cocktail I gave out made me raise an eyebrow—there was no way this shit wasn’t toxic to a system—but I kept my mouth shut as I worked, too busy fantasizing about carting around an RPG to really make any small talk with my patients.
Maybe we could find an RPG and blast our way through! That was the ticket.
You don’t know how to use an RPG, Vibby. Nice try, though.
Maybe Tony did. I was sure that was a skill he’d have mastered at some point in his life. It was just something Tony McKnight would do.
Alyssa did improve substantially once the painkillers were sweeping through her system. Or rather, she felt that she improved substantially. People tend to act a lot perkier when they aren’t in crippling pain.
“I think it’s working,” she said.
Her pallor suggested otherwise, but I went along with it.
“I went to the park last night,” I said, sitting down next to her to take her vitals.
Her wince told me exactly how she felt about that. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I told you not to go.”
“People just…they’re okay with it?”
“No. Not really. But what else can they do?”
I held my hand around her wrist, timing her heartbeat. Way too rapid. How was she not shaking in place, or at least drenched in sweat?
“Keller said people needed entertainment,” she said. “No television. No radio. So…fight.”
Radio.
The beginning of an idea took root in my overworked little brain.
There probably wasn’t a damn thing Tony, Dax, and I could do in Hastings.
But if we could get ahold of Hammond…
Don’t be stupid.
I pulled out my stethoscope and listened to her lungs while trying to think around it. There was no saying whether Hammond was still alive, for starters, or whether he had enough of a force left to put fear of God into Keller.
But if he did…
Vibby, this might be the dumbest idea you’ve ever had. Even dumber than trying to sneak into that movie theater when you were twelve. Remember how that ended? You got grounded for a month. This won’t go any better for you.
“Alyssa…” I began.
“Hey, Orvik?”
I turned around. A different medic stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at me like my tenth-grade algebra teacher after I failed yet another test. “Get back to work,” he said. “No fucking chit-chat.”
I put down my stethoscope. “I was taking her vitals.”
“You were chatting her up. Back to work.”