“The results won’t change if you wait.” Her voice came from the other side this time. I somehow managed not to look. I just sighed.
“Can you just appear already?”
“No. I’m sorry, but that’s your choice, not mine.”
“Okay. Right. Well… if you won’t appear, will you at least stay?”
I felt the ghost of her hand brush the back of my neck, there and gone in an instant. “Until the end. I promise.”
“Okay,” I said, and popped open the lid on the unit. “One…”
“Two…”
I slammed my hand flat on the metal pressure pad, triggering the needles to start their business. They bit deep, and I hissed, biting my tongue against the pain. I thought amplification was supposed to make this sort of thing easier. I didn’t feel any difference at all. Blood tests always hurt, but this one was worse than most, maybe because the unit was so primitive.
When the last of the needles disengaged, I pulled my hand away. The test unit beeped once and was silent. No lights, no alarms, nothing to indicate whether I’d passed or failed. Not that I really needed the confirmation that I was infected—“Get a bite, say good-night,” as they said when I was in training—but it still would have been nice. You were supposed to see your results. That was how the testing worked.
“Hey.” George put her hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you go lie down? You’re exhausted.”
I shrugged her hand off. “No, I don’t want to sleep through this. If this is the end of me being me, I don’t want to miss it.” A thought struck me, and I chuckled bitterly. “I can’t be too far gone if I’m still hallucinating you, can I? You’re a pretty complicated delusion. Zombies probably can’t manage this quality of crazy.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome.”
She fell silent, and so did I. I was too tense to carry on a conversation, even with a dead person who lived only in my head. I’d just keep trying to pick a fight, and she’d keep trying to stop me, until we wound up screaming at each other and I spent the last minutes of my conscious life arguing with the one person I least wanted to argue with. I just wanted to know that she was there, and that I wasn’t going through this alone.
So I stared at the test unit instead of talking to her, willing it to develop lights and tell me what I needed to know. All I needed was for it to confirm that my life was over. Nothing difficult. Nothing any fucking toaster couldn’t manage these days.
I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the test unit, feeling my throat getting dryer and waiting for the other symptoms to set in. The difficulty breathing, the sensitivity to light, the murkiness of thought—all the little dividing lines that separated human from zombie. Dryness of the throat was only the beginning, and my training was extensive enough to tell me exactly what the progression would be. Every little step along the way.
The door opened.
My head snapped up, tensing as I waited for the gunmen to enter. I wondered whether they’d send Becks to shoot me; I wondered whether she’d insist. We’d been colleagues for a long time, and Irwins tend to view shooting infected comrades as part of the job. It’s a sign of respect.
Dr. Abbey stepped into the room.
I stopped breathing for a second, eyes going wide. They went even wider as Joe pushed past her, his tail wagging wildly from side to side. “You’re going to let him be in here while you put me down?” I asked. “That’s cold. I mean, not that I’m one to judge, but that’s cold.”
Dr. Abbey smiled. “Hello, Shaun.” She shut the door behind herself, waiting until the locks finished hissing before she walked over to the other side of the table. She was carrying a folding chair, which she set up and sank into, watching me the whole time. “How are you feeling?”
“You shouldn’t be in here,” I said. Joe walked around the table and shoved his enormous head into my crotch in canine greeting. I barely remembered the blood on my hand in time to stop myself from pushing him away. “This isn’t safe.”
“Oh, right. You’re contagious.” She reached into the pocket of her lab coat, pulling out a can of Coke and putting it down on the table between us. “You must be thirsty. You’ve been sitting in here for a while.” I stared at her. “No, really, open the can. I want to see how good your manual dexterity is.”
Still staring, I reached out and picked up the can. Its cold heaviness was soothing, even before I popped the tab, closed my eyes, and took a long, freezing drink. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted, sugary syrupy sweetness and all.
Dr. Abbey was watching me intently when I opened my eyes. “How’s the throat feeling, Shaun?” she asked.