My thoughts twisted around in my head as I returned to my long circuit of the Plague Tent. If Alyssa and Logan saw what was going on with Keller, then surely other soldiers did, too. For all I knew, one stern order from Hammond might get this city back on the right track. For God’s sake, these people all bought Tony McKnight as an important officer in an equally important militia. If that wasn’t some kind of indication that Hastings needed serious help, I didn’t know what it was.
After another loop through the tent, I had about run out of sedative. No one had come in to relieve me, so I took one last look at the crowd and then darted out the back entrance to our strange little back courtyard—and Renati’s lab.
The good doctor himself was hunched over a microscope, staring intently at whatever was on the slide. He didn’t look up at me when I came inside. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he said. “Just finishing this up.”
“It’s just me,” I said. “I need more sedative.”
He did glance up then, his face coloring slightly. “Oh. Vibeke. I’m sorry. I thought you were…well…Lattimore.”
I wanted to chuckle, but didn’t have it in me. Instead, I just felt a twinge of annoyance that he got to sit here and play with his scientific toys while I actually tended to the sick.
I couldn’t bring myself to call them dying yet.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I could use some help in there.”
Some of my anger must have crept into my tone. Renati’s eyes widened slightly, and he lifted his left hand up to look at his wrist. His eyes got wider. “I’m sorry. Time must’ve gotten away from me. I’ll come in with you right now.” He stood up, and then gestured to the microscope. “Do you want to have a look?”
Sure, I looked in mysterious microscopes all the time. I walked over to him and peered through the eyepiece, and found myself looking down at a delicate fringe of silver thread dancing around.
“What is this?” I asked.
“That would be the zombie virus.”
I jumped back from the microscope.
“Oh, come now. You’re already exposed. And this version is somewhat defanged.”
I wiped my hands on my shirt, even though I hadn’t actually touched the thing. “You can defang it?”
“To a point. I’ve slowed it down a little bit, at least in my tests. Haven’t managed to neuter it entirely. That’s next. And then we’d have to try it on people…”
I really did need to get him and Samuels together one day.
He glanced toward the tent flap. “How are they?”
“They’re quiet.”
He riffled through some paperwork, eventually coming up with a chart. “You said you need more sedatives. I can get us those, but what about antibiotics?”
Had Lattimore not told him the situation? Or had he simply tuned her out as she spoke to him? Either scenario seemed feasible. “She said sedatives only. I guess we’re saving the antibiotics for…um…”
“For people we can still help?”
I stared at my feet.
He set the chart down. “Of course. She wants to save the antibiotics for the living. That’ll be her reasoning.” He made his way to the other side of the room and pulled open a drawer. He pawed through it, mumbling softly to himself, and eventually came up with several vials. “But the people out there are still alive, aren’t they?”
I thought of Alyssa lying there and nodded. “Yeah.”
He hustled over to me to show off his find. “So we’ll give this a try.”
It didn’t look like other antibiotic I’d pushed. It was a pale shade of blue, almost pretty in the tent’s crappy lighting. Something you’d expect on a gemstone necklace, not being shot into the veins of the dying.
Wait, hadn’t Lattimore made some noise about Renati having some kind of fancy new drug? “Is this the stuff that didn’t get FDA approval?”
“It’s a work in process, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “My predecessor did the bulk of the work on it. You realize there is no FDA left to approve it anyway.”
I bit my lip.
“You don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t, either. But what else can we do? Watch them suffer? What if it works?”
What if it worked? What if it didn’t? What did it matter anymore? They were getting worse. Nothing was helping. If Renati thought some experimental drug could help them, well, I was okay with that.
I nodded my assent.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get these poor souls dosed.”
It took two hours to make our way through the Plague Tent, injecting one patient after another. No one suffered any immediate ill effects, though no one started tap dancing in place, either.
When we were done, Renati made some marks on the chart. “Next dosage in four hours,” he said. “I’ll make a note for Lattimore. She won’t ignore it, she’ll just…” he shrugged. “I don’t know what to do with her.”
“She doesn’t seem to know what to do with you, either,” I said. I thought of the sound of Hammond’s voice, the surprise when we told him we needed help. All the stories I’d heard about Hastings and the military in general were fighting for space in my tired brain. Had Keller killed Durkee? Even if he had, what could we do about it? What if he tried to kill the rest of us?
I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired.
Renati gazed out over the tent’s occupants and let out a weary sigh. “We all do what we can, when we can,” he said. “I believe Gandalf the Grey said that. Clever sorcerer.”
“Wizard,” I murmured.
“What?”