She took a deep breath, then laid it out flat.
“Until you and I can go riding off into the sunset together, I’m not going to be with you. We can’t. You’re the team leader, and I may love you, but I expect all of us are going to die, sooner, rather than later. Maybe we can call it quits someday after this zombie thing and we can rethink it, but for now, you know we can’t. You have way too much responsibility to think of only one person.” I took off my work glove and brushed a strand of hair off her face, then ran the back of my hand across her cheek. She closed her eyes.
“Maybe someday, Brit.” She nodded and opened those blue, blue eyes. There were tears in the corners.
“Maybe someday, Nick.”
Chapter 7
“Mya, Redshirt, before we roll out, you have to go attend quarterly mandatory briefings. Sexual harassment and suicide prevention.”
“I already know how to sexually harass someone.”
Mya shot him a dirty look and asked me, “Why do we have to do these things if we’re attached to a super special unit?”
Brit laughed. “Because you’re regular Army pukes. Ha ha, sucks to be you!”
“Brit, Doc is giving a class to the Infantry in avoiding plague infection in Zombie Combat. You just volunteered to be his demonstrator.” Now I was the one on the receiving end of the dirty look.
“Let’s go, we have to finish mission prep tonight for tomorrow’s hardware store run.”
“Good. I need more saline solution for my contacts. Can we raid Walmart tomorrow too, Oh Fearless Leader?”
“Nope, quick in and out. You’re going to have to wear your birth control glasses. Maybe you should wear them now to keep the infantry guys off you.”
“Now why would I want that?” she said and batted her eyes at me.
“Bite me.”
“Someday.”
They followed me out of the tent. Mya and Redshirt were heading over to the ops tent to get their class and Brit and I went to join up with Docs’ class, which was already in session.
“Great, our demonstrators just showed up. This is Nick Agostine and Brit O’Neill. Nick, Brit, we were just going over the basic background on the plague.”
I made a “carry on” motion and he picked up where he left off.
“As you were taught in basic training, we don’t know the exact nature of a zombie infection. We do know that it operates on a cellular level, animating tissue where all prior electrical activity has ceased. However, it causes massive degeneration of neurons, so brain tissue and nerves are dead, except for the most basic functions in the hypothalamus. Why that survives, and a desire to eat living flesh, is unknown.”
A private sitting in the first row raised his hand. Doc nodded to him.
“Is that why when we shoot them they don’t feel nothing?”
“That’s correct. Also, the oxygen their muscles need seems to come from some kind of metabolic reaction in the virus itself, not through respiration. Their skin, which feels slightly slimy, is covered with some kind of organic growth which aids in respiration. One reason why Zs don’t like water.”
After answering several more questions about the nature of the Zombie infection with a couple of “We don’t know”s, Doc moved on to the combat phase of the class.
We spent some time alternating between various methods of defense against a zombie attack. Most of them were based on throws from jujitsu. The best defense against a zombie that gets inside your guard is to get it off you as quickly as possible. One serious problem, though, is often the decomposition of the corpse leaves you with an arm or a leg in your hand after you’ve tried a shoulder throw, with the thing still trying to take a chunk out of you.
We demonstrated how an upward strike would break a zombie’s jaw if you hit hard enough with the palm of your hand. I reminded them how hunching your neck up in your kevlar collar would prevent any cuts, and so would the issued, detachable hood that was part of our issue uniforms now. Joes often liked to throw away equipment that was hot and bothersome, but in this case, it could save their lives in a close fight.
I was demonstrating how to do a break away, acting as the Zombie, when one of the guys up front said “I’d like to have her bite my neck!” Brit walked over to him, made a “let’s go” motion, then promptly went apeshit, biting and clawing all over him. He tried hard to defend himself but she finally stepped back with his blood on her face. He had half a dozen serious scratches and one bite mark on his cheek.
“Oh my God, what the fuck is wrong with you?” yelled the burly infantryman, holding his hand to his face.
Doc stepped in between them.
“Private, if you can’t stop one girl you outweigh by more than a hundred pounds, what the hell are you going to do against a zombie your size, who has infection-fueled strength and could probably break you in half?”
He turned the guy around to face the rest of the group. The wound on his cheek was bleeding profusely.
“Let this be a lesson to all of you, especially you kids who haven’t been in a zombie fight yet: If that had been a real zombie attacking him, he would either be dead or reanimated right now, and attacking you. Think about it. We’re not playing games here. This isn’t basic training or the playground. Nor is it Army Combatives, where you are trying to choke someone out or subdue them. This is kill or be killed, in every single encounter. Now, partner up and TRY TO DRAW BLOOD!”
I walked over to where Brit stood wiping the blood off her face, and handed her my canteen to wash up.
“I think you’re getting a little slow in your old age, Brit.”
“Kiss my ass, old man” she said, and grinned a bloody grin.
Chapter 8
We had air transport for our equipment-scrounging trip. To get it, I had to promise the Infantry they could go along to get some Zombie fighting experience. While we were running around Home Depot with shopping carts and pallet jacks, they would form a perimeter and fight a holding action against any Zs that showed up. Then, after we had loaded up on the CH-47, they would conduct a fighting withdrawal back onto the choppers. That would give them some combat experience and leave us free to do our scrounging.
Or that was the plan. It was interrupted by an MH-60 from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment that came flaring in for a landing as dusk settled on the river. Two guys I recognized as Operators from Special Forces Operational Detachment (Delta) jumped out, followed a short, good-looking woman in ACUs. No combat gear or weapon, just a bag slung over her shoulder.
Doc stood next to me as we watched them exit the bird, the two Delta Operators acting as bodyguards as they made their way to the command post.
“Should we run and hide right now? That woman is bad news.”
“I know who she is, Doc. Doctor Morano from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. We’ve met before. Long story.”
She walked around the command post and made a beeline for where our team had set up our hooches. I headed her off before she ran into Brit and a gunfight started right in the middle of the camp.
She waved off the body guards as we approached. “Stand down, this is the guy we’re looking for.” The two of them immediately shifted their attention back to scanning for threats.
“Dr. Morano. Here to get someone killed, I presume.”
She smiled at me. “Nick, so much with the drama! I see you’ve joined forces with Sergeant Hamilton. You two make a good team, running around playing white knight.”
The first time I had seen her had been at Bagram Airbase, at the prison. I had signed for two prisoners who had been turned into gibbering idiots by her attempts at “biological interrogation.” The other two I had turned over the day before were dead, due to “natural causes.”