Chapter Twenty

At the bottom of the stairs, they'd created a second line of defense by stacking wood crates weighted with bottles of beer. From what I could tell, the area had originally been a beer-tasting lounge. The door to an adjacent storeroom had been blocked off with more crates of beer. The survivors were amassed around tables littered with empty bottles. More than a few were barely conscious, having drunk themselves into oblivion while they awaited their deaths. The others walked around aimlessly, imitating shufflers, and barely reacted to our presence.

It would have been easy to mistake it for the aftermath of a frat party, had it not been for the bloodstains on several walls and the trail where someone had dragged a body into one of the blocked-off storerooms, then attempted to wipe up the mess with paper towels.

"Do you want to tell me what happened here?" White asked, dragging her boot over the bloodstained floor. The stain didn't shift, letting us know it'd dried long ago. The people must have been barricaded inside for days, possibly longer. I counted sixteen of them in total.

"I work here," one of the men said. He was short and stocky, but otherwise unremarkable. "My sister," he said, pointing at someone in the pile of drunken bodies. "She's paralyzed from the waist down. Evacuating wasn't an option for her, so I came up with a plan to hide down here. The rest of my family dropped off food and water and weapons on their way out of town. We have a decent supply over in the women's bathroom. We've been rationing, so there's enough to keep us for a few months."

He pointed off to the right, toward an barricade-free door I hadn't noticed. It was between two racks of ornamental casks, which I presumed had been placed nearby so they could be pulled across the opening in the event of a breach.

He gestured to the mass of people and explained, "Most of these people broke in, looking for shelter after the bridges were taken out. My sister talked me into letting them hide with us. She said it wasn't right to leave them exposed. We had a few change into monsters. We only shot those who tried to attack and we put them in the storeroom. One came back even after we thought we killed him, so we blocked off the door. Since then, it's been mostly quiet until earlier. I'm not sure what attracted the zombies, but they started showing up last night. All the clawing and banging was upsetting the girls, so Kyle sent a load of buckshot through the door. I guess that's what attracted you folks?"

"Has anyone here had contact with the infected?" Doc asked without answering the question.

"No one has been bitten," the other man, Kyle, snarled.

Doc stared a him, clearly unimpressed by his attitude. "It doesn't take a bite to confer the infection. A single drop of blood splatter is enough to do it. How many people got dirty when you fended off the ones who died and came back?"

Kyle and the worker exchanged telling glances. Doc sighed. "Okay, so everyone here is infected."

"They can't be," I argued. "They wouldn't have attracted the apes if they were."

Doc's expression turned thoughtful. "Good point. Then it has to be the opposite end of the spectrum. We might be looking at a case of herd immunity. The ones who are naturally immune are somehow conferring the immunity on the others, possibly through contact immunity, but it isn't strong enough to make them invisible to the undead."

"Is this something we can use?" White asked.

"No," Doc replied immediately. "Herd immunity was a go-to argument for the anti-vaccination movement a few decades ago, but it only works when a large portion of the herd or, in this case, group of survivors has immunity. We're talking ninety to ninety-five percent of people have to be immune for the rest to be covered. That's why there were outbreaks of illnesses we believed to have nearly eradicated. The number of vaccinated diminished enough for old diseases to get a foothold."

"You're saying these people might lose immunity if we move them?" I asked.

"Not at all. With this much blood spatter around, I have no doubt their bodies are programmed to fight off the parasite now. I'm simply saying this isn't something we can recreate. It would mean putting healthy people into rooms with the infected for days and weeks at a time and pray they don't get infected before immunity can be conferred." He turned his attention to the woman with the Glock. "Where are you keeping the coma patients?"

"Men's bathroom," she said. "Follow me."

"Go with them," White ordered, staring pointedly at me. "I need to report in. The rest of you, try to wake everyone and do what you can to sober them up. None of us are moving an inch until I know the people I'm evacuating aren't going to black out on the climb to the roof."

Trying to act like I knew what I was doing, I gave her a stiff nod and followed Doc into a wide hallway. From what I could see, it had three doors leading off it—a men's restroom, a women's restroom, and an office. The office door was wide open, letting us see a teenage kid sitting at the desk with his feet propped up while he watched something on the computer.

The kid leaped to his feet when he saw us. "Who are they?" he blurted.

We ignored him and waited as the worker unlocked the men's room. Inside, a makeshift quarantine had been set up. The two patients were laying atop a bed of discarded clothes. Their pallor was ashen and eyes sunken like they were long dead. Some intelligent soul had encircled them with beer bottles, ensuring they'd make noise if they rose up and started shuffling around.

"Why didn't you just shoot them?" I asked.

The woman gasped in outrage, but it was the male worker who answered. "A few people offered to do it, but Penny wouldn't let anyone touch 'em. She said if the Good Lord wanted them to die in peace, it wasn't our place to go against His will. It's been a week, so there didn't seem to be any harm in letting 'em rest where they are. I have keys, so it was easy enough to lock the door."

"And I keep telling you, they aren't dead," the woman exclaimed. "The dead don't have a pulse."

"You're the only one who felt it," Kyle retorted. "Just look at them—"

"Enough," Doc said. "This will be real easy to clear up. Just give me a second with them. Grumpy, do me a favor and make sure these boneheads don't do something stupid."

I immediately took up position between the civilians and the two potential lich on the floor, holding my rifle at the ready to make it clear everyone else better keep theirs lowered. The trio tensed at my sudden movement, but their uncertainty kept them from doing anything proactive. They didn't understand why I was facing off with them instead of preparing myself to shoot the two dead guys.

Doc knelt down next to the pair of men and forced their eyes open one at a time, revealing silvered pupils identical to mine. He let go, watching them fall shut again, then sighed. "You must be terrified," Doc told the pair. "I can't imagine what it must have been like, pretending to be dead for nearly a week, knowing these fools might shoot you if you let them know you were awake. It's okay now. I'm Doctor Martin with Taskforce Zed. We won't allow anyone to hurt you. You're what we're calling lich. It means you've been infected by the zombie virus, but it didn't kill you. Come on now. Open your eyes. We aren't your enemy. I know it hurts, but moving will help. If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn't be talking to you."

As the pair started twitching, finding it difficult to move after laying still for so long, the woman gasped again and the men at her side started to react again. I moved to counter them, stepping forward and raising the tip of my muzzle a notch to let them know I wasn't playing games. They backed down, too confused to offer real resistance. Instead, they moved closer to the door, preparing to run if the men on the ground rose up and attacked.

"That's good," Doc encouraged. "Keep going. You can shake it off. I bet you're both thirsty."

"Pl—" one of the pair managed to croak out.

The people in front of me relaxed at the small utterance and I took the opportunity to distract them. "They're lich like me," I explained as Doc lifted the lich's heads one at a time and fed them from his canteen. "Not everyone who is infected dies and turns into an undead. Some, like you, are immune. You're carriers now and you can infect people, but it isn't going to kill you. Others, like me, drop into a coma for two days and come out of it with silver eyes and some fucked-up side effects. You should be damned grateful Penny didn't let you shoot these two. You would have been killing survivors no different from yourselves."

"Grumpy," Doc said. "Help me roll them onto their stomachs. They've been immobile too long. We need to disrupt the blood pool inside them or this is going to take all night."

I looked to the trio in askance. "I'm going to lower my rifle and help him. If any of you get the bright idea to shoot while my back is turned, remember the rest of my squad is your only way out of here. Without us, you'll be waiting a very long time for rescue—longer than you can hope for your supplies to last."

"We won't do anything," the woman, Penny, promised. "Are they really—?"

"They're as human as I am," I said. "I know you're not in a real trusting place right now, so here's what we're going to do. Doc and I will get these boys situated, then we're going to put some food and water in here for when they're able to move around a little easier. After that, we're going to lock the door and you're going to give me the key. That's to protect them as much as it is to ease your mind. We'll help you evacuate, then we'll come back for them separately. They won't be your problem to worry about anymore. Understood?"

The men exchanged another telling glance, then nodded, accepting my proposal. The woman didn't ask for anyone's approval before she nodded in acceptance, too. I flicked the safety on my rifle, engaging it, and slowly lifted my hands away from the weapon, trusting its weight to the attached sling. When no one took the opening I offered, I finally turned to help Doc.

Neither Doc or I commented on the tears steaming out of the lich's closed eyes as we turned them onto their sides, then onto their stomachs. They could have been tears of relief or tears of pain. Regardless, we couldn't do anything to help except what we were already doing.

Penny made up some plates of food out of the stores in the opposite bathroom, then brought in a few bottles of water. We cleared out a section of beer bottles so we could set the meals by their heads and I grinned when I discovered several bottles were empty.

"The guys outside weren't the only ones getting juiced," I said, holding up the evidence with a grin. Penny's eyebrows flew up in surprise and one of the lich snorted, attempting to laugh, then moaned and fell silent again.

"Dumbasses," Doc said affectionately. "Alcohol only dehydrated you faster. No wonder you're such messes."

"A week playing dead?" I commented sarcastically. "I'm surprised there are still bottles with beer in them. I would have emptied the lot after the first day and left a note asking for more."