CHAPTER 51

“Nate.”

A distant gunshot, somewhere down the hall.

“Nate, damn it, get up.”

More gunfire, three or four shots. Closer now.

From Nate, a mutter: “Get off me.”

Kellogg gave him a hard shake. He pulled the blankets away and saw the blood pooled under Nate’s thighs and under his buttocks. He saw the deep, ragged cuts up Nate’s left wrist.

“Nate, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. What did you do?”

“Fuck off. Lemme die.”

“Oh, crap, Nate.”

Kellogg threw the covers off the bed and scooped up one of the sheets. He tried to tear it with his fingers and couldn’t. He used his teeth until he felt the fabric give, and then he tore it into strips. “Here, give me your hand,” he said, and yanked Nate’s wrist into his lap. Working fast, he wrapped the strips around the wound, keeping up the pressure.

“Christ, you lost a lot of blood. What the hell were you thinking, Nate?”

“Lemme alone.” Nate was listless, his voice slurred and faraway. He resisted, but he was as weak as a kitten, and Kellogg was able to pull him off the bed without any trouble.

“You’re gonna have to stand on your own, Nate. Can you do that?”

“Lemme alone. I don’t want to go with you.”

“You have to, Nate. They’re inside the hospital. Christ, they’re everywhere.”

“Huh? Lemme go.”

“Not on your life.”

Kellogg got his shoulder under Nate’s uninjured arm and hoisted him upward. Outside in the hall, he could hear a woman screaming and the sound of something heavy being dragged along the linoleum floor.

“I don’t know how they got inside, but they’re everywhere. Nate, can you walk?”

A mutter. A grunt.

Kellogg pulled his pistol at the door. As they stepped into the hallway, a soldier with a big chunk of his face missing shambled forward, a moan gurgling up from his throat.

Kellogg raised his pistol and fired, laying the soldier out on his back.

“Come on,” he said. “This way.”

“Where are you taking me? Lemme go.”

The main lights were down, and only the dim red glow of the emergency lights lit the hallway. In the shadows ahead, Kellogg saw an infected soldier kneeling over a civilian. The body was twitching as the soldier tore into it with his teeth. There was a long, gory trail of blood on the ground, and it looked like the civilian had been dragged to her current spot from a side hallway.

The zombie rose to his feet as Kellogg and Nate approached. Kellogg shot him without even looking at his face, then turned down a side hallway and started to pick up speed.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Cafeteria on two. Gotta take the back stairs, though. The whole first floor is overrun.”

“Just lemme die here, doc. I don’t want to go.”

Kellogg looked Nate in the face. His skin was ashen, the lips tinged blue. There was a dull, glassy torpor in his eyes.

“You’re not gonna die, Nate. I won’t let that happen.”

To his left, Kellogg saw a stairwell. It was dark, but in the darkness he could see a faint red glow and tendrils of smoke rising up to the landing. From somewhere down below, he could hear the sound of fighting mixed with the moans of the infected. Off to his right was a long, empty hallway, also dark, and as he stared down its length he had a sudden flash-back to San Antonio and the five days he’d spent wandering the hallways of Brooke Army Medical Center, fighting the infected and praying for rescue.

Their first cases had come in late in the afternoon by EMS. Kellogg’s specialty was blood-borne pathogens, and he had no idea why they were calling him into the ER. The scant description they gave him made it sound like the San Antonio Police Department had beat the shit out of a handful of meth freaks, and now they expected him to…do what exactly? Triage wasn’t his thing.

And then he stepped into the ER, and everything changed. There were bodies everywhere. People were screaming. Doctors and nurses were moving from bed to bed like ants on a mound. Nobody seemed to have any idea what was going on. Kellogg saw terrible wounds on every bed he passed. He saw firefighters and cops with blood all over their uniforms, some of them slumped on their butts on the floor, heads hanging in exhaustion. A woman was tied down to an EMS gurney. Her lips had been torn off. She was straining against her bonds to reach him, her face bright with fever, eyes milky and bloodshot, every vein and piece of connective tissue in her neck standing out like electrical cords beneath her skin. Kellogg stared at her in shock. A nurse pushed by him and nearly knocked him down. “Excuse me,” he said angrily. But the nurse didn’t even pause to acknowledge the contact. Kellogg turned back to the woman on the gurney, and only then did he see the blackened necrotic tissue in the wounds around her mouth. Only then did he smell the unmistakable odor of rotting flesh. In that moment, he knew this was no typical San Antonio Saturday-night street brawl gone bad. This was something else entirely.

He turned to find the officer in charge. He wasn’t sure what they had yet, but he was already sure they were dealing with something highly virulent, and in his head, Kellogg was running down his list of containment options. It was difficult to pick apart the exact moment that things got out of hand. Perhaps it was already too late before Kellogg even stepped foot in the ER. But what he remembered of that first afternoon was the shooting. Three shots, high and hollow-sounding pops. He turned to see a wounded cop shooting at two men in a hallway to his left. Everyone hit the deck. Then they watched as the men lumbered forward, one of them already shot twice in the abdomen, and collapsed on the cop.

It was chaos after that. Any pretense at organized triage broke down. The infected—though at the time he still wasn’t thinking of them as such—rose more or less en masse and fell on the staff. People were yanked off their feet. Kellogg watched a friend of his get his throat torn out by an overweight woman in a bloodstained black miniskirt. A man with deep, infected scratches along the side of his face grabbed Kellogg by the shoulders and tried to throw him to the ground. Kellogg twisted in the man’s arms and swept his legs out from under him. The man went down easily, clumsily, like a drunk, and though he hit his head on a corner of the wall, he rolled over and got back to his feet without acknowledging the pain. He stumbled forward, and for the first time, Kellogg heard the moaning that would forever afterward haunt his sleep. “Back off,” he said to the man. But the man kept coming. Kellogg backed up and hit a chair. He pulled it around and raised it between him and the man. When the man held out his hands to grab, Kellogg caught him up in the legs of the chair and twisted, throwing him to the ground once more.

He was left on his feet, staring across the confusion on the ER floor, looking at the open exterior doors. Outside, dusk was just starting to settle over the parking lot. The sky was pink, and the lights of San Antonio’s skyline were just visible in the distance above the thicket of oak trees that lined the southern perimeter of the base. That had been his moment. He could have run for it right then and made it outside. Maybe escaped into the city itself and saved himself five days of hell. But he didn’t take it. He waited just a moment too long, and a moment later the gap closed and the daylight was gone. Only the nightmare remained.

Behind him, he heard the sound of a body hitting the floor, and it roused him from his thoughts. Kellogg looked around him, at the damaged hospital and Nate Royal hanging on his arm, his breath sour and rancid against his cheeks, and Kellogg’s head felt clearer than it had in days. He turned and saw the infected coming up the stairs. Four of them. Now six, then nine more. He could hear more on the stairs below.

“Nate,” he said.

A weak mutter.

“Come on, buddy, time to go.”

So the back stairs were out. Ahead of them, at the end of the hallway, was a waiting room that overlooked the lobby. There might be a way down to the second floor from there, but Kellogg wasn’t sure.

With the infected behind them, filling up the hallway with their moans, Kellogg pulled Nate toward the doors on their right. Nate wasn’t resisting, but he was nearly deadweight on Kellogg’s shoulder and it made moving difficult. By the time they reached the end of the hallway, three of the infected had managed to close the gap between them. Kellogg turned and shot the lead zombie in the chin, blowing the bottom of the zombie’s face off in two large bloody chunks. The zombie went down and flailed against the ground, trying to get back up, but Kellogg didn’t bother with a follow-up shot. There wasn’t time. Another zombie was on him. Kellogg fired and managed only a glancing blow to the thing’s shoulder. The bullet’s impact spun the zombie around but didn’t put it down.

Kellogg reached for the door and tried to push it open, realizing too late that it was controlled by a panel button along the wall of the hallway.

There was another zombie between him and the panel button, and more coming down the hall. He threw his shoulder into the door, but couldn’t get any leverage against it while still holding Nate’s weight.

Nate groaned, then slipped off Kellogg’s arm.

At first, Kellogg thought Nate was falling and he tried to catch him, but Nate pushed him away. “I’m okay,” he said. “Get the door open.”

Kellogg threw his shoulder into the door and felt it give a little, but it still wouldn’t open.

“The button on the wall,” he said to Nate.

Kellogg raised his pistol and shot the zombie in front of the button, this time landing a solid head shot. The zombie fell back against the wall and sagged to the ground, spreading a smeared line of gore down to the floor.

But before Kellogg could step into the gap to hit the button, Nate was there. A zombie lunged at him from his left and took a bite of Nate’s forearm, causing Nate to erupt in a scream so raw it seemed almost feral. The two of them wrestled awkwardly as Kellogg, momentarily frozen, stood there watching.

“Hit the fucking button,” Nate said.

Kellogg shook himself. He jumped forward and slapped the button on the wall. Behind him, the doors swung open, revealing a wide, carpeted, comfortable-looking waiting room with couches and chairs arranged around a TV set mounted on the far wall. Beyond the furniture was a row of cubicles separated by thick round columns that rose to a height of about ten feet off the floor but didn’t go all the way to the ceiling, the tops festooned with ferns.

He grabbed the back of Nate’s shirt and pulled him away from the zombie. A moment later, they were rushing across the waiting room toward the cubicles and climbing up the walls to the top of the nearest column. Kellogg pushed Nate onto the column, then scrambled up after him. He dropped down next to Nate and kicked the plants down on top of the zombies reaching up for him.

“That was close,” he said.

Beside him, Nate was clutching his arm, his eyes tightly shut against the pain.

Below them, the room filled up with zombies.

“They sure got on us fast enough.”

Kellogg pulled his knees up to his chest. He was breathing hard from the climb up the column, and sweat had dampened his scrubs so that they stuck to his chest. He glanced over the side, into a ring of snarling, mangled faces, and said, “Yeah, they tend to do that. You hear that in every survivor’s description, how fast they swarm. We still haven’t figured out how they do that.”

“How come they don’t kill each other?”

“What do you mean?”

“When they attack somebody who’s not infected. I’ve seen how sometimes they kill people—eat them, you know—but most of the time they don’t. I mean, they’re still in good enough shape to get up and chase other people around after they turn. Why is that?”

Kellogg was still winded. “Nobody really knows why they stop attacking a victim when they do. I don’t think it’s a conscious decision. It can’t be, actually. They don’t have any capacity for conscious thought, so it can’t be that.”

A dead body was propping the door open, and more and more zombies were coming into the waiting room, attracted by the moaning.

Kellogg said, “I think the important thing to remember is that these people are basically human-sized viruses after they turn, and a virus is like any living thing, up to a point. Its goal is to reproduce itself, to survive. That’s what the infected are doing. They’re spreading the virus. Propagating the species.”

“You mean the viruses are the ones telling people how much they can hurt somebody?”

Kellogg frowned. “Well, no. Not in so many words.”

“How can viruses do that?” Nate asked.

Kellogg looked at him. “They can’t, Nate. Not really. It’s more of an expression. A handy way to look at the problem, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Nate said doubtfully. He turned his arm over in his lap and inspected the bite he’d just received.

To Kellogg, the wound didn’t look too bad. It had already stopped bleeding. In his mind, he reviewed rates of infection, all the various factors that went into motion as soon as a person became infected. By all rights, Nate should have been showing at least a few of the early signs of infection, like labored breathing, sweating, irritability. It was too early still for confusion and unfocused aggression, or for the rank odor of necrotic flesh, but regardless, any normal person would have been showing some signs of the change.

“You did a brave thing back there,” Kellogg said. “Thanks.”

Nate grunted. “They can’t hurt me. I’m immune.”

True, Kellogg thought. “No courage without consequences, I guess.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Nate said.

“It means you’re only brave if there’s a chance you can actually get killed.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No, Nate, I’m not.”

“Whatever.”

Kellogg picked at a loose part of the carpet near the edge of the column. He said, “Nate, you mind if I ask you something?”

Silence.

“Why did you try to hurt yourself?”

“I didn’t try to hurt myself. I was trying to fucking kill myself. There’s a difference.”

Kellogg shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

He flicked a bit of the carpet down into the face of one of the zombies. It landed on the man’s bottom lip and hung there amid a spray of white spit.

“I told you the world needed you, Nate. Didn’t you believe me?”

“Fuck the world,” Nate said. “The worthless scum-sucking bastards never did shit for me.”

“So you won’t do shit for them. Is that about the size of it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You think that’s fair?”

For the first time, Nate looked him in the eye. “Who gives a fuck if it’s fair or not? You ask me, they all deserve to die.”

Kellogg raised an eyebrow at that. “Nate,” he said. “You’re a nihilist, aren’t you?”

“You’re making fun of me again.”

Kellogg laughed. “No, Nate, I’m not.”

“Then stop calling me things that I don’t know what they are.”

Kellogg paused.

“You’re right, Nate. That’s not fair.” He straightened himself up and turned as much as he could to face Nate. He said, “A nihilist is a person who believes in nothing. I mean nothing. He believes in nothing the way other men believe in liberty or God. They don’t see any reason to be loyal to anyone or anything because none of it matters. There’s no point to anything we do. In fact, a true nihilist has one guiding notion, and that is to destroy, to make all things nothing.”

Nate rubbed his arm. “I don’t want to destroy anything.”

“Yes, Nate, you do. You want to destroy the one thing in this world that has any value. You want to destroy yourself.”

Nate seemed to consider that. Then he said, “I told you. I don’t owe anybody shit.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that. But have you stopped to think why that’s true?”

“Why what’s true? Stop trying to confuse me.”

“Nate, I’m not—Look, I’m not trying to make fun of you, Nate. I see you struggling with this, and I want to help.”

“Why?”

“Because I get it, Nate. I understand where the hatred of the world comes from. I used to work in a hospital. I’ve seen the disgusting things people do to each other. I get it, Nate. I know the world is a mean and nasty place filled with people who don’t deserve to go on living another minute. I understand where the impulse to nihilism comes from. But the thing is, Nate, I just don’t buy it.”

“You don’t?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well, some people have God to fall back on. They say that nihilism is indefensible because ultimately there is God behind it all to give life meaning.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“No, me neither.”

From somewhere below them, the sound of gunfire was increasing. They could hear shouting, somebody giving orders.

“Sounds like they’ve almost got to us,” Kellogg said. “Hopefully, we won’t be up here much longer.”

Nate was silent for a long moment. Kellogg sensed that he was turning thoughts over in his head, questions that suddenly demanded answers.

“So why don’t you buy it then?” Nate said. “If you don’t believe in God, why bother? Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

“You’re not the first person to ask that, Nate. About seventy years ago, a man named Albert Camus asked the same question. He said that there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. He said that life itself was—”

“I don’t care what he said. I want to know what you think. Why don’t you kill yourself?”

Kellogg sighed. “I don’t think there has to be a reason, Nate. Not a good one, anyway. We are put into this hostile, alien world as isolated individuals. We can learn to like other people, even love them, but we can’t ever truly know them, and so we remain isolated. We’re not allowed to know why life has meaning, not for sure anyway, and yet we feel compelled to create some sort of answer. It’s an absurd downward spiral of impossible things, and yet it’s our lives.”

“So what does that mean?” Nate asked. “Are you saying that a world based on bad reasons is enough?”

Kellogg thought about that. “Yeah, I guess I am. To me, there doesn’t have to be a right answer. The questioning, the searching for an answer is enough in and of itself. I find that liberating.”

“Like…running into daylight?”

“You lost me, Nate. I’m not sure what that means.”

“You know, like, running into daylight. When the whole world goes white. It’s like it goes on forever. It doesn’t matter how fast or how hard you run. The world goes on forever.”

“Okay,” Kellogg said. He wasn’t following Nate’s reasoning, but he saw that Nate was onto something, in his own head at least, and that had been the point he was trying to get across in the first place, that we find meaning in our personal struggles to understand.

Kellogg picked at the scrubs stuck to his thighs. He was sweating fiercely, and feeling a little dehydrated.

He said, “God, it’s hot. Are you hot?”

Nate shrugged. “I’m okay.”

“Seriously? You’re not hot?”

“I’m okay.”

That stopped Kellogg. He looked at Nate and realized that was true. In all the tests they’d run on him, the only thing that stood out at all was his temperature. Always low. They’d injected him with both live and dead necrosis filovirus doses, and Nate’s body had never raised its core temperature to infection-fighting levels. That got Kellogg thinking. Fever was the body’s way of fighting infection. But what if that reaction was what the necrosis filovirus thrived on? What would happen to a body that didn’t give the virus what it wanted, like Nate’s?

There was gunfire out in the hallway. Somebody was barking orders, calling out if anybody was alive down here.

“In here,” Kellogg shouted.

Soldiers burst through the door. The zombies clustered around the column turned and stumbled for the soldiers advancing across the floor.

It was over in seconds.

Then a security forces lieutenant was standing at the base of the column, surrounded by dead bodies.

He said, “Major, you guys okay up there?”

“Yep, we’re good.” Kellogg and Nate traded smiles.