“Why are you telling me all this?”
He seemed to not have answer for that at first. Then he shrugged. “You’re listening. And I’m listening to you, even if our great leaders are not. I’m trying to figure out a way to put a stop to this, even if they don’t want to allow it.”
The optimistic part of me would have said Well, that’s something. But in truth, I couldn’t find it in myself to care anymore. Giving a shit about my patients and protecting them from a revenant had gotten me into trouble with the fucking leader of the city. Why should I care? I should just put my head down and do my work as Lattimore so clearly wanted me to.
“What’s it like out there? Outside.”
He said it in a reverential way, as if no one in Hastings had ever set foot outside their fancy new wall. As if the world out there were some great mystery to be plumbed.
What could I even tell him? Well, Doc, we’ve got biker gangs and acid rain and God knows what else.
“The dead,” he said. “Are they all over?”
Oh. He wanted to talk about the zombies.
“It’s shitty out there,” I said. “You have a really nice thing going with this wall.”
“They get in anyway. They’re all over the other side of the city.” He stared down at the papers scattered across his desk, his expression grim. “How many of them run now?”
I shrugged, trying not to instantly imagine one of them rushing me. “Some of them are fast. Not many, but some.”
He looked at me. “And have you seen them think at all?”
“Think?” Why would he ask me that, if he hadn’t seen it himself? In my mind’s eye I could see the flat, calculating stares on some of the dead. I wouldn’t exactly call them smart, but a handful did seem to possess a basic intelligence of some sort.
I tried to keep my expression flat and uninterested, but he was watching my face, and I knew I’d already given away something of my distress.
“You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
I folded my arms against the sudden chill. “I wouldn’t call them thinkers. But there’s a—there’s something—cunning, I guess, about them. It’s weird.”
It’s weird. I really wasn’t going to win any awards for description anytime soon.
I no longer wanted to debate any of this. “I should get back to work,” I said, even though the idea of going back to the Plague Tent made me a little nauseated.
“Don’t bother. They won’t want to see you for the rest of the day.” He pointed toward the lab door. “Go home. Assuming you don’t get a notice indicating you’re fired tonight, you can just come back tomorrow morning.”
“I could be fired?”
He smiled at the note of hope in my voice. “Doubt it. We need qualified medics more than Keller needs to make an example of you. You’ll probably be stuck in the Mystery Tent, though. Or the Plague Ward. Whatever name we settle on next.”
Great. Mystery illnesses and a chatty mad scientist. Just how I wanted to spend my post-apocalyptic employment.
Back outside, the chill bit into my bones. I was so damn tired of everything—at least in the jail cell I’d been able to sleep a lot. And outside the city, in the open, I had the added benefit of assuming everyone and everything was out to get me and do horrible things to my insides.
Here, behind Hastings’s big, strong wall, not everyone wanted to make me into a meal or a prisoner. And those who did might hide behind rank or kind words.
Son of a bitch.
I had survived the zombie apocalypse only to get mired down in office politics.
Chapter Twelve
As it turned out, there was one more person who wanted to ream me out that day.
Since I had walked home alone, I spent most of my afternoon lounging around the house, reading old magazines and trying to distract myself from the shitstorm I felt myself tipping into. Dax arrived in the early evening with our full order of pastrami and set it on the table, then paused and turned to me.
“The captain asked to see Tony,” he said. “After you left.”
Oh, great. I could imagine how that had gone.
The two of us ate alone that night. We were halfway through our meal when we heard the front door unlock and open. A moment later it slammed hard enough to make our water bottles rattle. Evie leaped to her feet and ventured toward the kitchen doorway. Her tail wagged hesitantly, then paused as Tony’s limping steps brought him to us.
He stood there and stared at me, the rage on his face unmistakable.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded. “You shouldn’t make enemies of people with guns.”
Tony. Tony of all people was going to get after me for trying to put down a revenant? Things had utterly turned on their heads if that were the case.
“Not you, too,” I groaned.
“There are rules we live by, Vibeke!”
Rules? When the fuck had Tony McKnight ever given a shit about rules? But as if to punctuate his newfound obedience to the law of the land, he picked up a water bottle and hurled it across the room. It struck a wall and the cap popped off, precious water spilling everywhere.