Another guard showed up around noon and joined the one in the closet. Sooner or later, the captain of the guard would grow suspicious. Jessie kept a close watch out of the door, waiting for someone to investigate the missing soldiers.
“They’re very short staffed.” Stevens told them. “It’s been like that for weeks. A new man has taken over as Chief of the Armies and has only left a skeleton crew here. I believe they were going to conquer Lakota, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Did they succeed?” Jessie asked wondering if more than one army was marching south. If Tombstone and Blackfoot weren’t just the beginning thrusts of the war, if they had enough men to attack all the towns simultaneously.
“I couldn’t tell you.” Stevens answered genially as he read the numbers off a ribbon coming from one of the machines. “I keep to myself over here. Did I tell you I think I have nearly perfected a way to control the reanimates with electrical impulses? It’s a fascinating study. With a modified game pad, I can make them turn left or right or march off the edge the roof. I can even control their impulse to bite and spread the disease. I really need to find an electrical engineer to program a more intuitive controller.”
He rambled on about his work, his experiments and his progress. Jessie grew weary and tried to stay alert as the doctor wondered if he could carry on his research at the Tower and questioned them about the facilities there. He spoke to hear himself speak and most of the time they couldn’t understand what he was saying when he drifted off into technical jargon. Sometimes they were sure he wasn’t even talking to them. Scarlet was saddened by what she saw, at how much he’d changed. He’d always been a little strange but he was even more detached than he’d ever been before.
Jessie and Scarlet glanced over at the cages when he talked of making the undead dance and perform for him. Just the thought of it was distasteful.
“Wouldn’t it be better to try to cure them? Maybe reverse the virus?” she asked. “Is it possible to heal the brain?”
Doctor Stevens shook his head, made a few notes on his tablet and explained it as simply as he could. He was used to dumbing things down for people so they could understand.
“It’s a virus. Same as the common cold.” he said. “We’ve been trying to cure it for centuries and it’s impossible because of the way it replicates. All you can do is mask the symptoms until it dies off and goes away on its own. Except the zombie virus doesn’t die off. It’s much too virulent because of the way it was designed, even fifty generations removed from the original host. Fascinating, really.”
“It’s definitely man made then?” Jessie asked
“Oh, yes.” Stevens enthused. “It’s brilliant.”
“Then you won’t be able to cure me?” Scarlet asked, ignoring the doctor’s perverse admiration of the disease.
Jessie ignored the door and waited with everything in him not wanting to hear the answer.
“Oh, no. Of course not.” Stevens said, completely unaware of the anguished look on both of their faces at hearing it said out loud. “But this is an incredible chance for me to study the results of the two non-compatible serums I created. Very rare opportunity because of your specific blood type and the unique properties of a serum long past expired.”
He hummed as he restarted a centrifuge machine, oblivious to the affect his words had on the two teens.
“I’m going to need a fresh sample from you, Scarlet.” he said and placed a slide in the microscope.
He’d never been good with people, never knew what to say at gatherings and was generally completely unaware how to read a person. It’s what made him an outcast before the fall but made him an asset to one of the hundreds of black budget projects run by the CIA. He wasn’t a cruel or intentionally unkind person, he simply wasn’t empathetic. At all. He would do the experiments others would balk at and didn’t understand why they would object. Science didn’t have morals.
“So, tell me doc.” Jessie asked when he regained his composure and realized the man was almost a machine himself, nearly emotionless except when it came to his work.
“Why is it going so fast now? The shot I gave her saved her life. She is supposed to be immune but got infected anyway. The penicillin had it under control, or at least slowed it down. Can’t you give her more of that? Won’t that at least stop it in its tracks?”
“She was immune.” Doctor Stevens corrected. “My serum was designed for her blood type and I had perfected the pink by then. What you injected her with started breaking the pink down. Basically, they were fighting for control with the old serum slowly winning the struggle. To put it simply, they were too busy fighting each other and doing a lot of cellular damage in the process. The reanimate virus was able to gain a foothold in the void that was left. The penicillin really didn’t do much, its effect was minimal at best. What is so interesting are these.”
He held up one of the capsules she’d gotten from the tower.
“The man who prescribed these was incompetent to a degree that boggles the mind. They accelerated the pace of the spread exponentially by introducing a new nanobot. One that would attack the healthy serum in your blood.”
“But” Jessie started and
