Part 25 (1/2)
Dr. Robbins shook hands. ”Come on in here out of the hallway so we don't have the whole G.o.dd.a.m.n place listening in on your personal business.” He ushered them into the conference room. Stew closed the door.
They filed in and sat in the padded chairs Robbins indicated they should sit in.
”How do you think I can help you?” Robbins asked.
”Well, like Stew said, I'm looking for my daughter. I haven't heard from her or my husband,” Dejah glanced awkwardly at David, ”since the Monday after the initial lockdown. I'm hoping you can tell me if you've treated her at the hospital - or if she's dead.”
Robbins watched Dejah visibly flinch when she finished the sentence. ”Have you been told about the quarantine camp?”
Dejah shook her head no.
”Shortly after the infection began, it became clear that we weren't going to be able to contain the amount of infected patients we were seeing coming into the ER. With the college nearby, we treat local residents and most of the students in Commerce. Sick patients were coming in by the droves. The military set up a quarantine camp on land loaned by a hospital board director, and we started sending all infected people to the camp.”
”Only it's not just infected out there,” Stewart interjected. ”Family members refused to leave their sick relatives, so there's another section of the camp for non-infected people.”
”Right,” Robbins said. He opened his briefcase and removed a fat file with a big rubber band stretched around the center. ”I've got a patient manifest here. If your daughter is at the camp, we'll know if she's sick or well and to which tent she's been a.s.signed.”
Dejah exhaled in relief.
”Now, I'm not saying she's there. I'm just telling you we'll know if she is or isn't. What's her name?” Robbins snapped the rubber band from the folder.
”Selah Corliss.”
Robbins flipped through the doc.u.ments. ”Daughter of Thomas Corliss?”
”Yes! That's her! Is she sick?”
”No. She and Thomas came in with a Lily Corliss - his mother. She's sick,” Robbins said.
”Oh no, not Lily! Anything about Vince?”
Robbins shook his head. ”No Vince mentioned.” His eyes met Dejah's with an unstated a.s.sumption.
”He would never have left Lily's side.”
”I can only tell you the information I have in this file. I'm sorry.” Robbins closed the file and replaced the rubber band. ”I'm going to the camp. It's on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Tawakoni, on a cattle ranch. The three of you are welcome to come with me today - at your own risk.”
”Why the risk doctor? Don't you guys have the place secure?” David asked.
”We haven't had contact with the camp for forty-eight hours. I don't know what we're going to find when we get there.”
”I'm going,” Dejah said.
Dr. Robbins looked between Dejah, David, and Shaun. After sizing them up, he looked at Stew. ”Do you think this can be arranged?”
Stew shrugged. ”I'll finagle you another Jeep. They're only going to give you two men though, so you'll have to use them as drivers. Can any of you handle a rifle?”
They all nodded.
”Good. Well, okay then, Matty. Tell you what. I'll wait until after you've left before I mention this to anyone. They're not going to go after you once you're there.” Stew smiled.
Robbins scowled. ”Anything you know about the camp that I should hear?”
”We haven't heard from them in two days. Do the math, buddy. You've been in the thick of this long enough to know that when something goes wrong with this mess, it goes really wrong.”
CHAPTER 37.
”Touch him!” Bal Shem ordered, anger flooding his voice. Selah cowered between the filing cabinets and the desk. Tears rolled over her cheeks as her whole body trembled.
Spread on the floor of the trailer was the mangled, mostly devoured, twitching body of a man. Stringy bits of meat clung to his joints. His ribs were broken, but his abdomen was intact. All skin and muscle tissue on his limbs were gone. Bal Shem let the infected eat everything that wasn't vital to the person being healed and useful again.
Selah sobbed, her hands and arms caked with dried blood. Her clothes were filthy. Flies buzzed around her unwashed hair, and the trailer smelled foul. ”Please. I'm so tired. I can't.”
”You can and you will. Touch this man, now!”
Selah stretched her hands to the gruesome remainder of a man. She closed her eyes tight and blindly groped what should be a corpse. Shudders of exhaustion shook her small body, and her knees buckled. The generals of Bal Shem fought to be the first to catch her. To touch her. Snarling, they shoved each other in the struggle.
”Enough!” Bal Shem shouted. They stopped quarreling. He held Selah by the waist, supporting her body. ”Finish it!”
Selah grasped the man's leg bone. Her shoulders slumped. Her head lulled to the side.
”She needs to sleep,” the only woman in the room said. ”Too tired.”
The others nodded in agreement. Bal Shem was furious. ”She can sleep when she's finished with this one.”
”It's happening.”
They gathered around the man's body and watched as it regenerated. It was a miracle of supernatural reconstruction. Veins straightened and reconnected, striated muscles uncurled and enmeshed. Blood seemed to flow beneath a transparent layer until skin reformed like a crawling sheet of wet rubber, then solidified and formed unbroken layers over the wounds. And then, the man sat up and screamed. As if he knew he'd been resurrected again to serve as a perpetual feast for Bal Shem's infected ma.s.ses and was crying out not so much from the pain of his death, but the pain of his existence. Over and over again, they consumed the bodies of the healthy, and then forced Selah to heal the all but dead heaps of bone and organs.
Selah went limp. Bal Shem pa.s.sed her to the woman who took her to the closet to sleep.
The woman returned. ”Too many.”
”What?” Bal Shem demanded.
”Too many bodies to heal. The girl is too tired.”
”We'll let her sleep longer.” Bal Shem said, ending the discussion. ”Blue s.h.i.+rt,” he said to the general in the blue plaid s.h.i.+rt. ”Take woman and troops in one Jeep. Drive to the houses along the lake and bring back more people. If we have more healthy, the girl won't have to fix the bodies so much.”
”We did that before,” Blue s.h.i.+rt said.
”Yes, you did. But there are still more healthy by the lake.”