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“Shit. What about the others?”
“Patients Two and Three are brothers. They’re not sure how the twenty-year-old contracted it, but he works in the hospital cafeteria. The parents were on the way to the ER with him last night when he bit the seventeen-year-old. Less than an hour later, little brother became aggressive, and both parents were bitten and infected.” He paused. “It’s bad, Angel.”
“I know,” I choked out. “It’s awful.”
He sighed. “Let Dr. Nikas know he can call me twenty-four seven if need be.”
“I will. Thanks.”
He hung up. I returned to the media room and related what Allen had told me. “Pierce, have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked. Desperately.
“No, but that doesn’t mean much. Before the twentieth century and rapid communication, I had little knowledge of events beyond my local area.”
Dr. Nikas pinched the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. “I will speak to Allen,” he said then left with Marla. Pierce did a come-with head nod to Marcus, and they departed, leaving me alone with the news anchor and her weirdly bared teeth.
I sank to the couch, stomach a tight knot of acid. I wanted to be numb, too shocked and upset to feel anything. But I didn’t deserve that luxury, not when I was the one responsible for this catastrophe. There was absolutely no denying this was all my fault. Horton and Connor. Dead. And now five more people were infected. Con
nor had been murdered, but what if the disease itself was fatal?
If I hadn’t abused the V12, I wouldn’t have damaged my parasite, and I couldn’t have infected Judd, which meant the alligators that ate his remains wouldn’t be all zombified. And sure, even as normal gators, they might’ve chowed down on the hunters, but Douglas Horton wouldn’t have turned into an undead monster.
And Connor would still be alive.
I forced myself up off the couch. Enough wallowing in misery. Sure, I’d fucked up bigtime with the V-12, but who the hell could’ve anticipated it would result in contagious zombie-gators? All I could do now was look for ways to put out the dumpster fire I’d started. Dr. Nikas was hard at work on the issue, and he knew more about zombies than any other zombie alive.
Or maybe there was someone who knew zombies even better. Maybe a certain someone who was a couple of thousand years old.
I made my way to the medical wing and Kang’s room. The door was closed, so I quickly punched in the code then slipped in and shut it behind me.
Kang lay gauze-wrapped in the bed exactly as I’d seen him the other day. Squiggly lines continued to crawl across the monitor screen, but his eyes remained stubbornly closed.
I sat on the chair, propped my elbows on the bed, and planted my chin in my hands. “Kang, it’s Angel. Again. I really need you to wake up. Please. There’s some bad shit going on, and I’m hoping you might know a way to fix it or help us out with your ancient zombie mojo smarts. People are . . . shambling. I don’t know what else to call it. And it’s all my fault. I got addicted to the V12 mod, and it really fucked up my parasite, and then I went and bit a guy named Judd who was trying to kill me but then he got wasted by another dude and so I ate Judd’s brain but I didn’t eat all of his brain ’cause I was in a hurry and had to escape into the swamp, but later that night Judd fucking came into the swamp and found me even though most of his brain was gone. And he was all Night of the Living Dead and shit. But I killed him again for good, so I thought everything was okay. But a couple of days ago a hunter got in a boat accident and drowned, then got bit by an alligator, or got bit by a gator then drowned, either way he woke up in the morgue and came after me all urrrrrrrrrr so we figured some gators must have eaten Judd and got infected. And then yesterday a really decent cop who’d been grazed by alligator teeth collapsed and started going shambly. But then some Saberton fuck killed him. He didn’t deserve to die. And now we have zombie-gators out there, and Dr. Nikas is trying to find answers, but we don’t know jack shit about curing a shambler and . . . we’re so screwed.”
I massaged my temples. Kang remained frustratingly unconscious. I couldn’t even annoy him awake with my unchecked blather.
“Wake up,” I snapped. “Wake the fuck up. I need you.” I pressed my middle knuckle in the center of his sternum and twisted.
Nothing.
“Goddammit, Kang. I know you can hear me. Please.” I gulped back a sob. “What the hell do I have to do? Bribery? Barter? Blackmail? How’s this: if you don’t wake up, I’ll post pictures of you looking like a mummy all over the internet.”
Was his steady breathing a teensy bit faster? I yanked my gaze to the monitor. The pulse had climbed two whole beats per minute. Didn’t seem like a lot except for the fact it had been steady at fifty-two since he came out of the tank.
I clenched my hands together as adrenaline set them shaking. “That’s right,” I said. “If you don’t wake up, I’ll upload a pic of you to one of those Photoshop battle sites. Next thing you know, there’ll be pictures of mummy-Kang getting ass-fucked by bin Laden.”
Kang’s chest shifted as he drew a deeper breath. I froze, certain that if I so much as twitched, I’d scare him back to the safety of his coma.
“Would . . . break . . . internet,” he whispered, eyes open a crack.
I leaped to my feet and punched the air several times. “Is it too bright in here?” At his infinitesimal nod, I rushed to the wall and dimmed the lights to about quarter strength. “Better?”
“Much,” Kang rasped, opening his eyes more. He cleared his throat, wincing a bit. “Angel. I . . . saw you. In the tank. A dream?”
“Nope, it was me,” I said. “I had a little problem and had to be regrown, so I know a bit of what you were going through.”
“A problem . . . such as mine?”
“No, not the serial killer. I, uh, had trouble with one of Dr. Nikas’s parasite supplements.”
