Patient Z

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Mitch returned from the mess with a tray of food. Cal had lain down on his cot, ignoring Bren as she kept guard over him.

“Go get dinner,” Mitch told her, setting his tray on a table. “I’ll take the watch tonight.” Cal leaned up on his elbows, looking speculative. Mitch ignored him.

“Okay,” Bren said. She handed the rifle to Mitch. “Any trouble…”

“I know. Pull the alarm.”

“I was going to say shoot him in the head, but the alarm is good too. See you in the morning.”

She took her leave. Mitch took sandwiches and a coffee mug for himself off the tray, then put it on the floor and pushed it close enough for Cal to reach.

“Am I supposed to eat it off the floor like a dog?” Cal asked.

“Just pick it up.” Mitch couldn’t be bothered with the sulking. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it away again.” Cal shrugged and collected the tray, placed it on the cot, and started eating a sandwich from a paper plate.

“There’s soup in that tub,” Mitch said, nodding at a takeout-style carton. Actually, no takeout-style about it. It was from a takeout, an abandoned deli they’d raided ashore. Cal checked the tub and sipped the soup. “Homemade,” Mitch said and wondered why. He wasn’t here to sell their catering services to Cal.

They ate in silence, with occasional glances at each other. Mitch felt guilty every time he looked at Cal. It felt like peeping on a guy in his bedroom, since Cal couldn’t leave and escape his gaze. They had at least erected a half-height screen in front of the chemical toilet in the corner of the room so he could get some privacy there. Mitch had another source of guilt, though, aside from the intrusion on Cal’s privacy.

“I’m sorry about the gag.”

Cal looked up from sipping on his paper cup of coffee. He didn’t look overly impressed with the brew. It was impossible to find any coffee that wasn’t stale anymore.

“Yeah, you f*****g should be,” he said. “Enjoy that kind of thing, do you? Make you feel like a man in front of the women?”

“No!” Mitch snapped. “I had no choice. Doctor Burnett is the only doctor we have, and I can’t do anything to risk her life.”

“You’d have shot me dead if I’d made any kind of move against her, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“I get it.” Cal shrugged and lounged on the cot, the chains clanking as he moved. “She outranks me.” Cal finished his coffee, tossed the paper cup on the tray, and put the tray on the floor. He shoved it toward Mitch with his foot, sending the things on it scattering across the deck. Was that provocation or a test? Did he want to see if Mitch would clear up after him? Mitch stayed in his chair.

“Can I get you a book or anything?” Mitch asked.

“Got a big library here, have you?”

“Not bad.” They brought books back with them every time they went ashore, raiding abandoned libraries and bookstores. Books that taught them everything they needed for survival. Books for the children, liberated from schools. Lots of fiction—almost the only entertainment they had around here, barring board games and a couple of guitars. “I can have someone bring some down for you. What do you like?”

“Maybe later.” Cal lay down, an arm across his eyes. Mitch watched him, wondering if he was going to sleep. That was a symptom, wasn’t it? By day four or five, an infected person started sleeping almost continually, as if they were already dead. Except you could wake them. Wake them and beg them to stay with you. Beg them not to be dying. Beg them…

He quickly turned aside from the morbid thoughts. Cal didn’t look ill. Not day-four ill anyway. The doctor had said he was recovering, getting stronger. Maybe he really had been bitten by a dog. And if he had, if in a few days they were letting him out of those chains, a fit, healthy, and damn fine-looking man? What then?

No sense in thinking about it until it happened. No sense thinking about the possibilities if Cal stayed. Mitch’s gaze roamed over the lean, toned torso and well-defined arms. But he chided himself for it. What made him think Cal even swung his way? Dex always used to say Mitch had the gaydar of an especially dense rock.

Cal wasn’t sleeping. He sighed heavily and let the arm that had been covering his eyes flop onto the cot. He looked at Mitch again. The guy sure had a direct stare. When he frowned at you, you knew you’d been frowned at. When he’d been giving Mitch a good scowl while they’d had him gagged, Mitch had had to fight a strong urge to back away. He wasn’t frowning now, but it was a hard stare, and it made Mitch uncomfortable. It made the silence oppressive. When it was clear Cal wasn’t going to break that silence himself, Mitch spoke.

“So, how did you end up on the boat?”

“You really want to know, or you just making conversation?”

“Fine.” Mitch sat back in his chair, cradling the rifle in his arms. Just one sign, just one…Cal would thank him for it—from heaven, at least. Better to be finished off quickly than become one of those things.

“Okay, fine,” Cal said. “I stole the boat, obviously.” He sat up on the edge of the cot and gave Mitch an assessing look, as if waiting for a reaction. Mitch didn’t react. You couldn’t call it stealing or looting anymore. The world lay out there rotting away. You had to take things while they were still usable.

“Couple of weeks ago I ran into a group,” Cal said. “Mostly men, couple of women, and I traveled with them for a while.”

“Safety in numbers.”

“Maybe,” Cal said. “We came to a fork in the road, you might say. I wanted to go one way, to Santa Monica. They were heading to LA.”

“Why Santa Monica?”

“The bars and the beaches, of course.” Cal smirked.

“Is that where you’re from?” Mitch asked.

“No, I’m from New York. But I left a long time ago. Long before all this. Anyway, I wanted to go to Santa Monica because I’ve been there before. Had a good idea of places I could get myself some winter supplies. But my new friends decided I was coming with them whether I wanted to or not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they thought I looked tasty.”

“Tasty?” Mitch’s mind rebelled at the first interpretation of the word. He couldn’t mean it literally. There was livestock wandering around the landscape just waiting to be shot and stores piled high with canned and dried food that might take the remaining humans fifty years to eat. It was hard to tell, because they couldn’t get news from most of the rest of the country, never mind the rest of the world, but Mitch thought only 5 percent of the population remained uninfected. Resources were not a problem. Getting to them was.

“There’s some very strange s**t happening out there,” Cal said. “Don’t suppose you see it, safe on your oil rig.”

“We aren’t self-sufficient here, you know. We go ashore every few weeks for supplies.”

“Right.” Cal went quiet for a moment and then picked up the story. “I got away from them, but they came after me. My car ran out of gas, and I got away into the brush on foot, but they were still coming.”

“That when you were bitten?”

Cal opened his mouth and then stopped and frowned at him. “Trying to trip me up, officer?”

Mitch controlled his reaction to that. Had Bren told him while Mitch was off getting them dinner? Or was he guessing? Mitch neither confirmed nor denied the…accusation.

“Yeah, that’s when the dog got me,” Cal went on. Emphasis on the dog. “I found a marina. Most of the boats were already gone, but that one was there. Where is it, by the way?”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s my boat now.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law, eh?” Mitch said.

“Certainly is in salvage at sea.”

It would be a shame if he left and took his boat with him. The large cabin cruiser would make a nice addition to their small flotilla of boats. But would he leave without it? Because even if he wasn’t infected, he was not staying.

“So I took it out to sea,” Cal said. “But I had kind of overlooked one thing.”

“What?”

“That I know s**t about boats.”

Mitch chuckled when Cal grinned. Yeah, he could laugh at it now. Now that he wasn’t dead. There were times Mitch and his people had sailed back from missions ashore to a chorus of giggling about fighting off zombies and feral dogs.

“I went up the coast a bit,” Cal went on. “But then I ran outta gas about a mile from shore.”

“A mile? Surely a fit man like you could swim a mile?”

“Well, yeah,” Cal said. “A fit man like me who happens to be able to swim probably could.”

“You can’t swim?”

“I always preferred to play with the pool boy.”

Mitch didn’t need gaydar to interpret that remark. Cal’s smirk told him all he needed to know. He kept his face absolutely still, not rising to the provocation. God, he hoped not rising. Because the second Cal said that, the second he indicated he played for the right team, Mitch’s body flushed with heat again. Get in there, boy! it demanded. Mitch ignored it. Ignored the urge to have Cal right there and then.

It had just been so long…

He pulled himself together. Cal went on with his story.

“When I searched the boat, I realized it had been stripped. No life raft. No food. No fresh water. Nothing. Not even a life jacket. I guess I could have found something that floats and kicked ashore, but…there are sharks, right? In these waters, I mean.”

“Yes, there are. You could have made a raft using a hatch cover or something.”

“I guess. But I was getting so hungry and thirsty, I couldn’t think straight anymore. And I don’t think I’d have had the strength to paddle back to shore, not against the current and the tide.” His voice dropped quieter. “I guess I just got too weak, and I…I remember stumbling on the steps and falling and nothing else. How did you guys find me?”

“The boat drifted close to the rig, and we went to check it out. We thought it might have slipped its moorings. We thought we might as well have it. Then we found you aboard.”

“There goes your salvage claim,” Cal said.

“Quite.”

“So the boat’s okay, though? I mean, not damaged or anything?”

“No,” Mitch said. “It’s fine. Why?”

Cal shrugged. “Just thinking about when you let me leave.”

“You’re pretty sure we’ll let you leave.”

“You will. When I turn out to be just fine, which I am. And if you don’t…” He smiled. “I’ll still leave anyway.”

“You’re a cocky one, all right.”

“Yeah.” The smile turned into a grin, and he rested a hand on his abs, straying close to the waistband of his pants. Mitch watched the hand, entranced. Was he going to slide it into the pants? Touch himself? God, the picture of it in Mitch’s mind almost overwhelmed reality. Cal did no such thing, but Mitch could still see it, plain as day.

Mitch stood abruptly, and Cal’s eyes widened, but Mitch only strode across to turn off the light, leaving the room dark but for a lamp on the table. Cal became a dark figure in the deep shadows of the far end of the room. Did Mitch hear a whisper, Cal calling his name softly? Cal saying, Come here.

If he did, he ignored it. If Cal was flirting with him, it would be entirely for purposes of escaping from the chains they had to keep him in the next few days. Mitch had to remember that. Had to remember the group he was responsible for. They were his priority—not his libido.

“Go to sleep,” Mitch said. “The doctor will check on you again in the morning.”

“Great, more needles.”

“I said go to sleep.”

Mitch sat at the table again and positioned the lamp so it pointed across the room to let him see Cal well enough to…to shoot him. The weight of the rifle in his arms reminded him of exactly why he was watching over Cal. Because someone had to be ready to kill him if he showed symptoms. As soon as that happened, Mitch would do it. It was mercy. For Cal and for himself. Because if he waited too long, he was only condemning Cal to a lingering death and then revival as a monster.

Mitch couldn’t watch that happen to anyone. Not again.