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Allen looked at me askance. “You’re kidding, right? You keep human brains in that thing.”
“Yes, brains. Not fecal samples.” I shuddered again.
He rolled his eyes. “The container is sealed. I promise you won’t get any BM on your brains.”
I gave him a challenging stare. “That’s the best alliteration you can come up with? Bowel movements and plain old brains?”
Allen chuckled. “I’d like to see you do better with the material at hand.”
“Let’s see, there’s ‘poop on your pons’ or ‘crap on your corpus callosum’ or ‘doo-doo on your dura’ or—”
“Stop.” He lifted his hands in surrender. “You win.”
“Damn straight,” I said, preening. “And I’m going to leave now so you can cry about how sad your wordplay game is.”
“Sad indeed,” he said. “I think I liked it better when you hated me.”
“Well, how’s this for old time’s sake then,” I said, grinning as I flipped him off.
“You’ve never flipped me off before.”
“Not to your face.”
He groaned. “Go. Depart. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I was smiling as I snagged my lunch box, but my mood had dimmed considerably by the time I reached my car. It was fun bantering with Allen about the grossness of the samples, but they were a reminder of the gigantic problem known as Douglas “Shamblin’ Man” Horton.
• • •
The Tribe’s zombie research lab was over twenty minutes away, giving me far too much time to fret about zombie gators on the loose in Mudsucker Swamp. Then again, Dr. Nikas already had several bits of Mr. Horton’s brain. It was possible he’d already examined them and instantly realized why the man had gone all Walking Dead on us. And perhaps he’d even come up with a way to make sure it never happened again.
Totally possible. I grimly clung to that optimism for the rest of the drive.
Eventually, I arrived at the Tribe’s zombie research lab: an utterly nondescript, faded blue, windowless, cinderblock building, squatting in a desolate field surrounded by thick pine forest in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana.
I parked in the gravel lot and sauntered up to the single door that marked the front. There were other exterior doors, but they were carefully concealed and massively secured. So much so that the one time the lab had been infiltrated, the Saberton aggressors had no choice but to make entry via the front door—and that was no walk in the park unless you were welcome.
Though everyone referred to this building as “the lab,” it was much more than a research facility. A medical area served both zombies and humans, permanent quarters housed the handful of personnel who lived at the lab, and nicely furnished dorm-like rooms accommodated temporary guests. There were even cells for unwilling guests. Plus an emergency bunker that could supposedly survive damn near anything but a direct nuclear strike. Moreover, Dr. Nikas was a key member of the Tribe and part of the inner circle, and since he rarely left the building, the lab also served as the de facto headquarters for Tribe operations.
After clearing all three security doors, I passed through the central hub and into the research wing of the building. In the chemical assay room, a pale, thin, ponytailed man sat hunched on a stool as he calibrated a spectrophotometer. Jacques Leroux—Dr. Nikas’s right hand man. Though I was fairly sure he didn’t have any medical or science degrees, he knew Dr. Nikas’s methods and moods inside and out and was a skilled medic and research assistant. Of course, he probably didn’t need any degrees considering he’d worked side by side with Dr. Nikas since the Franco-Prussian war.
Jacques glanced up, expressive hazel eyes startling, as always, given his otherwise wan appearance. Those eyes flicked to the box in my hand. “You have the rest of the samples?”
“Yup. Everything Dr. Nikas asked for.”
“That’s good news,” he said, returning his attention to the calibration. “Dr. Nikas is still working on the brain pieces Rachel delivered. If you could prepare slides for what you brought, it would be very helpful.”
“Got it covered.” I tamped down my disappointment that Dr. Nikas hadn’t already solved the shambler-mystery, then tugged on gloves and worked on getting slides set up. Dr. Nikas knew everything there was to know about the zombie parasite and how zombies worked. If there was an answer to be had, he’d find it.
Or would he? I despised the whisper of uncertainty that crept in. Only a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Nikas himself confessed his self-doubt and told me that despite his centuries of experience, there was still only so much one man could do to tackle the mass of needed research. For several months last year, Dr. Kristi Charish had been an “unwilling guest” of the Tribe. Though she was an evil psychopath, she was also an utterly brilliant neurobiologist. During the short time Dr. Nikas worked with her, he’d made more progress in all of his research and development than in the past decade. Two incredible minds working together had produced far greater results than either could have managed on their own, even with all the time in the world. The sad truth was that Dr. Nikas and Kristi were perfect research partners, each able to expand and extrapolate upon the other’s ideas.
But Kristi had only helped because she had no choice—though she’d surely filed away juicy research results in her twisted brain the entire time. Considering
she now worked for Saberton Corporation, it was unlikely she and Dr. Nikas would ever be brainstorm buddies again. I fucking hated Kristi Charish with the fiery heat of a thousand suns, but not having her brainpower flat-out sucked for our current situation.
I finished the slides and put the rest of the samples in the fridge. “Is there anything else that needs doing?”
“Not at the moment, thanks to your recent industry,” Jacques said, eyes crinkling with a rare display of humor. My “recent industry” had been an effort to keep from dying of boredom during my recovery. I’d quickly grown sick of browsing the internet and watching TV, and so once I had the strength, I wheeled my little butt over to the lab and took on all the low priority tasks that tended to pile up.
