I found it hard to believe this seemingly reasonable man could have done anything to warrant Keller tossing him into jail…but then again, maybe I was too used to Keller barking at me for perceived wrongdoings.
The captain lifted his gaze toward the ceiling for a few seconds, either collecting his thoughts or steeling himself for the conversation ahead. “When this all started—I mean, when it first became clear the dead were getting up—the R&D team became very aggressive in searching for a treatment. They were getting close to a vaccine, along with specialized antibiotics designed to combat bites and whatever was transmitted with them. We were under orders to continue working on them.”
“Orders,” Tony repeated. “From Franklin?”
“Yes, this was before they went dark. They were very interested in our progress.” He settled back against the wall, his gaze once again flickering up to the ceiling. “It was a rough drug. Lots of side effects. It worked in laboratory conditions—it sufficiently changed the virus—but it was rough on actual bits victims. They had run out of the injured and dying to test it on. So I asked for volunteers.”
Samuels had talked about testing on living people once. I had seriously feared that Hammond intended to execute the man on the spot. I had never seen the general—well, he was a captain then—so angry.
Durkee must have seen the look on my face, for he smiled faintly. “I know. Bad idea anyway. A squadron came forward, but even then the suggestion did not sit well with some, including my second in command.” The smile faded. “Keller.”
Tony leaned away from him. “You tested it on your own men?”
“Volunteers,” Durkee said. “Men and women who wanted to end this as much as the rest of us. And the antibiotic Jacoby cooked up had already proven effective on dogs and cats…”
“You tested it on dogs and cats?” Dax squeaked.
Animal testing was bad and all that, but it was the unspoken meaning behind this information that scared me most: “Dogs and cats can be zombies?”
“So he says,” Gloria said. “I never saw any.”
“It jumped to animals at some point,” Durkee said, ignoring our stricken expressions. Undead animals. Zombified dogs. Holy shit, Evie had bitten plenty of ghouls since we’d caught her. She hadn’t turned, but…
“We don’t see many,” he clarified. “Maybe they’re better at evading bites. But that’s neither here nor there. It worked on them. We needed human trials, so the squad came forward.”
I figured this story didn’t end well. “It didn’t work, did it?”
“It didn’t work.” He let out a humorless snicker. “Oh, did it not work. They got sick and turned.” His voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “I don’t rightly know what they turned into, but it was…it was not what they had been. They didn’t talk. They didn’t make any noise at all. But they watched you. They were fast. They knew what you were going to do. There was intelligence left in there.”
Nothing in his description sounded like what I had seen in Alyssa. I couldn’t decide whether that made me feel worse or better about her prospects.
“R&D begged to study them. I let them do it. Figured if we stayed vigilant it would be fine.” His expression grew sheepish. “Mistake number three or four, if you’re keeping track. They broke out, overran the primary medical facility quickly…we locked down surviving staff, went in there to fight them off…they did not make it easy. I must have lost hundreds of good soldiers.”
There had never been any peep of this from the radio, as far as I knew. A story this gruesome wouldn’t have stayed with the top brass. Someone would have leaked Massacre in Hastings all over camp.
The captain rested his hands atop his knees. “I…we fought for three days. Eventually we managed to round up the remaining…changed…and corral them. But they escaped. I don’t know how. Or why. Maybe someone helped them. Maybe they did it themselves. But they just disappeared. Near as I can figure, they reached the quarantined part of the city. I wasn’t about to send more men after them, not into that hornet’s nest. So we sealed off as many entrances to that side of town as we could, put up fencing, and doubled our strength at the perimeter.”
Where had Renati been in all this? I cleared my throat. “And your research team?”
“Most of them died in the initial fighting. It seems they all turned at once. Jacoby had been off-duty…he hanged himself. Found him dangling from a noose in my office.” Durkee looked down. “He tried to eat me. You can guess what happened after that. Whatever you gave to your sick…that was likely something Jacoby cooked up. And if that’s the case, he probably tinkered with it to ensure it would alter the virus as well.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Clearly I should have stuck to fighting. Helping the living is entirely too fraught with peril.