Chapter Thirteen

"No way it's natural," Doc commented. "Alien, maybe."

Grady shot him a dark look, then turned back to me. "We don't know. It could have been germ warfare. It could have been someone's research gone wrong. Or, yes, it could have been some undocumented meteor dropping out of the sky with the original parasite riding along. There's really no way to tell. We lost every CDC investigator we sent to the area of the original outbreak, so we only have partial intel."

"Where was that?" Hanson asked. "Korea? Somolia?"

"Nepal, not far from Everest," Carver answered, then fell silent as we put the pieces together for ourselves. There had been something on the news almost two months ago about China and India moving forces into Nepal. It'd been believed the two nations had been going to war, using Nepal as a staging ground, but this put a new face to the militarization. War journalist had managed to report on the mass genocide, but it'd been background noise in a world full of horrible shit.

"That was months ago," Hanson said, having made the same calculations. "How is it possible it's just now reaching us?"

"The problem was contained," Grady said with a lazy shrug. "Then it wasn't. Then it was. Then it wasn't. That's the problem with the zombie plague. It's insidious and it only takes one drop of fresh blood to break quarantine. Right when we thought we had it under control, we'd have a fresh outbreak in need of containment. When the infection reached Kathmandu, too many infected people got out before we could lock down the city and, from there, pockets started appearing around the globe. Every country did its best to contain and quarantine the infected. Most countries thought they had it under control, until they didn't. Then they did. Then they didn't. It's a vicious cycle."

"We should have heard something about a pandemic wiping out everyone overseas," I argued. "I still don't see how we didn't get word until after it reached our soil."

"I do," Doc said with a tired sigh. "I'm a doctor so I was aware when the entire country was put under quarantine. The public simply wasn't made aware this particular quarantine was more severe than past ones and the media was too busy trying to figure out why their international contacts dropped off the map to notice the bigger picture. What you think of as day one for us wasn't the actual day one. It was more like day fifty or higher. It would have been easy at first—planes coming from overseas would have traveled more than an hour, so they would have only needed to redirect the ones with sick people on board."

"That doesn't account for immune carriers like me," Hanson said.

"Exactly," Doc replied, bobbing his shaven head in agreement. "Who knows how long someone like you was walking around like a ticking time bomb? The CDC and FEMA would have been overwhelmed controlling inbound flights carrying people with symptoms, so it would have been easy for someone like you to slip through quarantine in the early days. Then it would have been a waiting game. A papercut, a car accident, a mugging—after that, it would have entered the population and spread."

Knowing that, it was easier to see how the military managed to respond so calmly. They'd been dealing with the situation for longer than we'd been aware and they'd had time to plan and mobilize.

"Do you think there are more people like me already on the East Coast?" Hanson asked quietly.

"Yes," Doc replied, seeming unconcerned with the threat. "Mandatory blood tests are being required of all citizens prior to further evacuation. It's how they found me. I had no idea I was infected, but I assume it happened when I was treating a patient. My orders to join the Antarctic Expedition were replaced with an offer to join Zed. Once they explained the worst was already over for me, it was an easy choice to make. I go where I'm needed."

"Speaking of being needed," Grady said, tapping his black wrist watch. "We're due to report to the field." He turned to me and Hanson. "Do you feel like coming along or you want a day to settle in?"

"I'll come," I replied, eager to see the team in action.

"If it's okay, I'll hang back this time," Hanson said, sagging in his seat as exhaustion seemed to catch up with him. "I could use some real rest."

I'm not sure what made me do it, but I grabbed his hand to give it a comforting squeeze and gently rubbed the back of his hand with my thumb. "You okay?"

Hanson stared at our joined hands and slowly nodded. "Yeah," he lied. "Delayed shock, probably. I'll be good after some sleep. Have fun shooting dead heads and blowing shit up. You can tell me about it when you get back."

Before I could question him further, he slipped out of the booth and headed toward our bunk. Doc clapped a hand on my shoulder in sympathy. "Give him time to process," he advised. "He's not lich like you. His emotions aren't dulled and he's still fully human where it counts. It's normal for him to have a hard time adapting to something like this. I'd be more worried if he seemed completely okay."

"I think I'm doing okay," I replied, realizing it was true. Nothing about the situation had me freaking out or panicking. Even knowing I was about to join a mission to zombie central, I felt nothing except calm and ready. "What does that say about me?"

Doc snorted. "You already know you're completely fucked, my friend."