That touched her and a little smile overpowered her lips. Shrugging her shoulders up slightly, she looked away from him and offered, "Thanks."
"Hey, guys," came from behind them.
They both turned to see most of the San Antonio Zombie Response Team approaching with their breakfasts.
Josh sat down beside Zachary and asked, "Mind if we join you? Thanks."
All of them sat down with them, Morgan right across from Zoe.
"It was way too quiet in that room last night," Morgan told her.
Zoe looked down to her tray and nodded, confirming, "It was pretty quiet where they moved me."
Eric raised his chin to the zombie girl and asked, "So you coming with us today?"
Shaking her head, Zoe replied, "No. Rachel has a bunch of stuff she wants to do with me here." She was tempted to just tell them the truth, to tell them why, but she really did not want them to know that she could become their enemy at any time. Not yet. "But I can ask."
"When are we going?" Zachary asked in a clear attempt to be part of the team.
"Going to hit them a little after noon," Josh replied as he picked at his eggs with his fork. "Zombies don't like heat and if we hit them when they're the weakest then we can do some serious damage."
Donny added, "A couple of months ago we were helping out in Austin. The temperature pegged out at like a hundred and five and when we found zombies in the open they were dropping dead from the heat."
"That was weird," Morgan said. "You'd be taking aim at one and it would just drop."
"We saved a lot of ammo that day," Matt reminded. "All we had to do was watch them fry."
Zoe finally looked up from her tray and asked, "So they die if they get too hot?"
"Looks like it," Eric confirmed. "I talked with Caswell and Kavorski about it and they said the virus has kind of a low temperature threshold. That's why they don't produce body heat. They get too hot and the virus will die. That means the zombie will die."
"What if someone gets really hot and they're not all the way a zombie yet?" she prodded.
He shrugged. "Don't know for sure. It seems like a lot of heat would kill the virus, but too much heat can kill the patient, too."
Turning her eyes down to her tray again, Zoe nodded, but her eyes darted about as she thought.
"There's been talk about seeing if the whole thing can be reversed using heat," Eric went on, "but right now it's just talk. Until we hear differently we'll just keep shooting them."
"But not you," Morgan added with a smile. "We like ya too much."
Zoe offered her a glance and a little smile back.
Conversation shifted from this to that and eventually everyone was done. Zoe only ate about half her food, and was really not that interested in eating or the conversation, but something caught her ear and drew her attention to Donny.
"I'm just saying that we should take over that gym that's a couple of blocks from here," he was saying. "From what I saw last time we went by it, it's got everything: Swimming pool, sauna, weight room… whole nine yards!"
"Sauna?" Zoe asked.
"Yeah," he confirmed. "Jacuzzis, too. I think they may even have massage tables."
Morgan snickered and asked, "So who is going to give you a massage?"
He smiled and said, "You know you want to touch me, Morgan."
"How hot do those saunas get?" Zoe asked suddenly.
Everyone glanced around, and most just shrugged.
"I'm sure not danger hot," Eric replied. "You're really just supposed to go in there and sweat. It helps detox the body and you can come out feeling great!"
"I've never been in one of those," she said.
"They don't often allow kids in them," Donny informed.
"I'm eighteen in two months," she advised almost proudly.
Dan looked to her and asked, "Two more months, huh?"
"Down, boy," Morgan growled.
Zoe pushed away from the table and stood, picking her tray up as she announced, "I have to go see Doctor Caswell about something. I'll see you guys later." As she turned, she bumped Zachary with her hip and said, "See you later, Zach."
With her ZRT vest over her pink shirt and Sergeant Morris' hat on her head, she approached the gym with slow steps, looking up to the sign that was near the top of the two level building. It was illuminated and this told her the electricity here was still working, and that was a good sign.
Pulling the glass door open, her hand found her revolver as she quietly entered and looked around her. It was an open space with a counter ahead of her, a glass wall behind it and workout equipment on both sides. This place was very big, very inviting, and very open. The ceiling was high and it was very well lit within.
She passed by the office area and negotiated the weight systems, the treadmills, the exercise bike stations, lined up along the wall and facing big screen TV's that were all off. It was a maze within, but she finally happened across a sign at the back near the bathrooms, a sign she had been looking for. It directed her downstairs where the men's and women's showers were on opposite sides, and in the middle was the big, Olympic sized swimming pool, partitioned off by walls that were glass half way up. There were lockers, hot tubs, and finally she found what she was looking for on the other side of the pooclass="underline" The saunas!
She had seen how this worked in the movies and on TV shows. There were dressing rooms and showers on the lady's side adjoining the bathrooms and stacks of towels for both the pool and sauna. She entered one of the dressing rooms and undressed, neatly folding her clothes and putting them in a stack on the bench within, her vest, belt and gun on top of them. Wrapping herself in a towel, she draped another around her neck and left the dressing room, and she strode right to the closest sauna. A dial to the right of the door would set the temperature, and she turned it all the way up. There was another dial beside it, a timer, and she turned it as far over as it would go as well. Drawing a deep breath, she opened the sauna door and stepped inside, closing the door beside her.
This one was smaller inside and looked like it would accommodate a group of six or so on the two wooden benches on both sides of the stones that were in a cedar trimmed cauldron in the middle, and this is where the heat was coming from. An ornate bucket of some kind with a metal ladle laying in it was right beside this, and it was still full of water. Dipping some of the water out, she poured it over the rocks as she had seen done on TV, and she backed away from the steam that rose up. This done, she backed up and sat down on one of the benches that was built into the wall.
Zoe drew a deep breath, watching the steam continue to rise from the stones as she said aloud to herself, "Well, I guess this will end today, one way or another."
CHAPTER 13
Lunchtime had ended and the San Antonio ZRT had returned.
All Morgan could think about was a shower. They found few zombies and they had made quick work of them. The police station they stormed was now secure, weapons and ammunition were taken and the short mission returned in success. It was time to relax.
With the door to the room closed, she pulled off her vest and belt, setting her weapons on her bed one by one. The ponytail she wore her hair in for this mission was taken down and she shook her hair out as she threw the scrunchie down with her weapons. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she unlaced and removed her boots, then her socks, setting them down by the nightstand. With a quick rub of her eyes, she stood and walked toward the bathroom for that shower, pulling her shirt off as she approached.
The door to the room burst open and Morgan, who was just wearing her trousers and sport bra now, was quick to cover her chest with her shirt as she barked, "Hey! A little privacy?"