Page 69 of Hollow Valley
The building that housed the Wellness Center must have been some kind of gift shop, back before the virus.A sepia photograph of the star-shaped fortress (from before the Revvers had started painting it) was framed on the wall.Beneath it was a sign in bronze letters readingFort Lately National Historic Site.
Some of the shelves that had likely held shirts and trinkets now held supplies – folded cloth, bandages, little glass bottles of alcohol and syrups, rows of various crystals and dried herbs, and all sorts of other wellness paraphernalia.
One side of the room had been turned into a triage area of sorts.Three beds were separated by curtains between them.Two of them were empty, but the third held a young boy covered in red hives.
“Keep going,” Benedict commanded, directing me toward the back of the building and a door labeled with a big red sign:Quarantine KEEP OUT.
The clinical scent and the hospital beds brought my mind back to the locked medical ward at the Blaine County Quarantine Zone.My brother Max had only been eight when they started experimenting on him.The doctors and butchers there had been so desperate to find a cure for the lyssavirus that they hadn’t even cared if they killed a little boy in the process.
And they would’ve, if I hadn’t traded places with him.For six months, they kept me in a locked room while they drained my blood and sliced me open.They biopsied my spleen, my lymph nodes, and my salivary glands.They cut open my skull to get a sample of my brain and drilled a hole in my bone to get my marrow.When what they found there wasn’t enough, they’d cut me open and started taking my organs.Anything they thought I’d survive without: appendix, tonsils, uterus, ovaries, and my left kidney.
And all of it had been done with little to no anesthetic because they had nothing to spare.
But I couldn’t let myself dwell on that.That was the past, this was now, and this was different.A quarantine was a necessary precaution these days, one that I was powerless to stop anyway.All I could do was take a deep breath and try to slow the racing of my heart.
A cold sweat was breaking out all over my body, and my hands were clammy.My clothing felt too restrictive, and I pulled off my balaclava and gloves, and I kept taking deep breaths.
Benedict glanced back at me as he unlocked the door.“You okay, lady?You aren’t gonna hurl, are you?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
He pushed open the door, revealing a small wood paneled room that had likely been an office back when this was still a gift shop.It had apparently been repurposed as a holding cell for the possibly infected, with two cots and a red biohazard bucket for waste.
“On you go then.”Benedict motioned for me to enter, and when I didn’t do it on my own – I couldn’t seem to force myself forward – he grabbed my arm and dragged me in.
My feet caught up underneath me, because only one of them had real feeling.On my left foot, I could only feel a vague throbbing burn around the zombie bite, and an increasingly uncomfortable pins-and-needles sensation everywhere else.
I fell face first onto the cold tile floor, and Benedict let out a snorting laugh.
“One of the Empaths will be in soon to check you for bites,” he said.
“What’s an Empath?”I asked.
But instead of answering me, he slammed the door shut, and I was alone and locked in a room.My stomach rolled, but I swallowed it down because I didn’t really have time to vomit.
On my foot was a clear zombie bite, and no one here would believe me if I said I was immune.Especially not with Benedict already telling me I looked sickly.They’d see the bite and probably take me out back and shoot me.
I stared down at my aching foot and took a deep breath.I had to do something about it, and I had to do it before the alleged “empath” came in.
42
Remy
The last time I had taken my boot off had been right after the zombie bite, and apparently, my foot had swollen two or three times the size since then.Parts of it were still blissfully numb, but the rest burned as if a hundred red hot needles were being jabbed through it.
My sock and bandage were completely stuck to my foot and stained the color of rust, which I knew wasn’t a good sign.I had wanted to change the bandages, but it had been so damn cold ever since, I only took off layers if I absolutely had to.
This might have been a mistake, although I don’t really know what I could’ve done differently out there.
Maybe it was the going “out there” part that was a mistake.
I shook it off, because I knew what I needed to do.I survived everything that had come before this, so I could handle a little injury to my foot.
As I peeled off the sock and bandage with a wince, I realized that this was quite a bit more than a “little injury.”Surprisingly, the zombie bite itself wasn’t the worst of it.It was a puckered crescent made of teeth marks above my smallest toes.Slow healing, yes, but otherwise only a flesh wound.
My toes, however, had been exposed to too much cold and snow, even with my makeshift remedy for my boots.All of them were experiencing some degree of frostbite.The big toe was in the best shape, just a little purple and red.The middle two were swollen red and blistered, and my final smallest two had turned completely black.
Longterm, whatever was going on with my toes would be a much bigger problem, but for the immediate future, I had to mask the bite.