Jacobs had pillaged a battery-powered tablet from somewhere and was making rapid marks with the stylus, murmuring to himself.
There was a low, industrial whirring as the fans came on. Grace flinched as the ventilation system roared to life. Jacobs only stood with his head bent, tapping at the little screen.
On the other side of the glass, the girl began to pace frantically, scraping at the walls with her fingers.
“What’s she doing?”
Jacobs glanced up. Above them, ducts ran along the ceiling, their shining planes punctuated by vents.
“She’s just got a whiff of us,” he said. “The air’s circulating again.”
In the other room, the girl was scrabbling at the floor vents and then at the edges of a broad grate in the wall. It occurred to Grace that if the DEET worked like Jacobs said it did, then the girl wasn’t responding to it. That she must be smelling something else. Or maybe the DEET didn’t work after all, but was only a placebo. She did not know whether Jacobs had intended the fallacy to comfort her or himself.
“Are they really mindless?” she said, with her palms against the glass.
Jacobs looked at her strangely. “You mean, did they experience brain injury? If we could mitigate the reaction to incidental levels of CO2, we’d be certain. But no, I don’t think they’re stupid.”
The lights failed then, and the room lapsed into blackness except for the flicker of the tablet. Without ceremony, Jacobs lit the xenon lamp and continued his notations. Grace reached for her sidearm.
Out in the corridor, footsteps echoed. Multiple people-eight, nine maybe-and coming closer, but they were unattended by the manic sounds of laughter. Grace moved so that her back was to the wall.
Jacobs still scribbled on his tablet, letters slanting down in a frantic scrawl before the CPU converted them to type. He was talking to himself under his breath, alive suddenly, animated. His intensity had become frantic, bordering on possession, and it frightened her.
The door swung open and the strangers came in slowly, with wary looks and raised guns.
“Who are you?” said a tall, craggy man at the head of the group. He stepped into the light. “What are you doing here?”
He wore no uniform. Someone had sewn stripes onto the sleeves of his jacket, but the stitches were sloppy, inexpert. A scar ran across the bridge of his nose and then jagged abruptly down one cheek. Behind him, a contingent of men held firearms. Mostly hunting rifles and shotguns.
Grace moved forward, standing at attention. “Private Maureen Grace and Sergeant Rabe Jacobs, 68W.”
The man nodded. “Trask,” he said.
He gave no rank and did not need to. His manner conveyed the brutal authority of a general, although the unit behind him was motley. Probably local militia. He was looking past her to the bare desk and the glassed-in examination room. “And what are you doing here, Private Maureen Grace?”
She glanced at Jacobs, who sat limply, watching the newcomers with the air of someone drugged. “We’re investigating a possible course of action. The sergeant’s developing a theory and has acquired a research subject.”
“This research subject here?” Trask said, raising his pistol to the glass. “This raggedy little bitch right here?”
At the desk, Jacobs set the tablet down. “What are you doing? She’s not a threat, you moron. She’s just a little girl.”
The look Trask gave him was long, calculating. “And she’d have your throat out in two seconds.”
“I had her calm. I had her sedate, even when I was in the room. We have all the preliminary evidence necessary to pursue this. Are you listening? We could alleviate their aggression. We could fix them!”
“And lead them around like pets? Keep them until they’ve had enough one night, and kill us in our beds?”
Jacobs scrambled up from the desk. “It is our duty to cure them.”
“There is no cure,” Trask said, coming down hard on each word. “No cure but to rout them, and pick them off one at a time until it’s over. There’s no way to play nice and then go home.”
Around him, the other men nodded, their gestures tied to his orbit like moons or planets. Grace watched them. Trask embodied all the qualities vital in a leader. His voice was low and commanding. His face was honest. It promised suffering to anyone who got in his way.
Above them, the ductwork clattered. In the eerie glow of Jacobs’s lantern, the men started, raising their weapons to the ceiling.
Grace crossed to the observation window and pressed her face to the glass. “She’s gone, sir.”
When the ventilation duct dropped down into the observation room, the sound was very loud. The whole apparatus seemed to peel away from the ceiling-a long, shining arc that hung for an instant at its apex, then crashed to the floor with a deafening clang.
Grace watched as a dim figure scrambled out on hands and knees, slashing and clawing at everything in reach. Lank, dirty hair, tattered dress, dark splatters down the front. Then nothing but the smile. The handgun was light, not powerful, but efficient, up out of the holster and in her hand. She put the girl down from eight yards.
Beside the desk, Jacobs lay under the remains of the duct. The aluminum had torn jaggedly, like a mouthful of teeth. Her ears still rung with the sound of metal striking cement and on another plane, laid over the metallic clatter, the shot echoed again and again.
She did not recall crossing the room, but there she was beside him. His cheek had been raked open and he gasped for breath, looking up at her. A dull, shocked look, like he was offended by the treachery of the world. The wound in his side was long. Not a puncture, but a ragged gash, first through the material of the biohazard suit and then through his skin and after that, the subcutaneous fat. The blood was bright, arterial red.
Grace knelt over him and pressed her hands to the wound.
Somewhere in the ducts, a sharp, high-pitched giggle broke loose, echoing down on them like spilled nails.
“Welcome to the zoo,” Trask said behind her.
“You know I’m right,” Jacobs whispered. “Don’t you know I’m right?”
But Grace knew nothing about chemistry or pathology. The mysteries of science were Jacobs’s domain, and the brilliance of his vision eluded her.
He was coughing now, bloody saliva collecting at the corners of his mouth. On the other side of an examination table, the dead girl grinned and grinned.
Trask moved closer. He was wearing work-boots and the soles squeaked on the linoleum. “Look at his face. He’s infected anyway. You know it, I know it. Just end it-for him and for us. We need to be strong if we’re going to restore the nation.”
All through the compound came the sounds of scrabbling, shuffling laughing. Grace had a strange, unbidden thought. There is no nation; only people.
Under her palms, Jacobs coughed again. The skin around his eyes had taken on a bluish hue.
Trask had nothing on his side but grim conviction and force of will. A man who was simply not afraid could persuade the masses to follow him anywhere. He might not be a war hero, but he could marshal the survivors.
Above them, the metallic clamor was much louder. Grace lifted her hands.
She raised the gun, held the muzzle to Jacobs’s cheek. His eyes were pained and cloudy. She felt for the trigger and did not think, because it was easier not to.
Steve and Fred by Max Brooks
Max Brooks is one of the kings of contemporary zombie fiction. He is the author of World War Z-which is currently in the process of being adapted into a feature film-and The Zombie Survival Guide, both of which were huge international bestsellers. Brooks has also published a graphic novel, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, and he’s had short stories in the anthologies The New Dead and Dark Delicacies II. Prior to becoming the world’s foremost expert on zombies, he worked for two years as a writer for Saturday Night Live.