The Wilsons' Saga (Book 1): The Journey Home Page 2

  “Well, in the movie, there was this thing called ‘the rage virus.’ It made people go crazy and attack everyone who was still normal. They weren’t zombies, per se.”

  “No, of course not,” Rachel said with a smirk.

  “You want to hear this or not?” Jerry frowned.

  “Not really.” She cracked a smile. “But I can tell you’re dying to tell me, and I don’t want you pouting all day, so please continue.”

  Jerry paused, pretending to decide whether he would tell her or not, then went on like a ten-year-old describing a T-Rex. “They weren’t technically zombies because zombies are reanimated dead people, right? And these were still alive. They acted like zombies, though, because they had no thought process other than to kill anyone they saw. But they didn’t eat their victims.”

  “I can’t wait to share this at the kitchen.”

  “Really?”

  “For sure. I’m a regular fucking celebrity with my direct line into the zombie subculture.” She shook her head. “At least with the people who don’t feel sorry for me.” Jerry frowned. “So, how do you look that up?”

  “Mike found this one picture from the movie. It actually did look a lot like the people in Brazil. All crazy red eyes and popping neck tendons.” Jerry paused to take a sip of coffee, scratching Mandy’s head. She had finished helping Kodi clean the floor and crawled her front half into his lap. Jerry smiled and winked at Rachel. “I can’t believe we have a hundred-pound lap-dog.”

  “I can’t believe how much that dog loves you.” She smiled. “Before you came along, she would barely let a man into my house. It was seriously affecting my ability to date.”

  “She knows a quality human being when she sees one.” Jerry leaned close to Mandy’s head and stage-whispered, “Thanks, Mandy. I’ll get you another tortilla when she isn’t looking.”

  “More like she smelled Kodi on your pants. But I am glad she decided to let you in the door.” She smiled and ate another bite of her food, then shook her head. “And Alicia hasn’t injected any sanity into this subject?” Rachel thought Bob’s partner was the only voice of reason amongst a bunch of testosterone-crazed paramedics that egged each other on to greater flights of fancy. She was probably right.

  “She tries, but on this one I don’t think she’s got a shot.”

  “She and Bob seem like an odd combination.”

  “I know. But when you work twenty-four-hour shifts with someone, especially if it gets hairy and you get used to covering each other’s back, it brings you close. Look at me and Mike. I’d probably take a bullet for the guy.”

  “I know. Sometimes I’m a little jealous,” Rachel said with an exaggerated grimace.

  “Don’t worry. I’d probably take a bullet for you, too.” Jerry winked. “If it was small caliber.”

  “I’m touched.” Rachel flicked a piece of tortilla at him. It bounced off his cheek, and Mandy scarfed the morsel out of the air. Jerry and Rachel looked at each other with surprise, then Kodi turned to look at Rachel with his eyebrows coming together.

  Jerry laughed at the dog’s stricken expression. “Can you believe that favoritism, Kodi?”

  Rachel laughed. “I’m so sorry, Kodi.” She tossed him a piece. Kodi snatched it out of the air and sat, waiting for more.

  “Oh. Speaking of bullets,” Jerry said, “we also got into a pretty interesting zombie weapons discussion.”

  “No kidding? What’s to discuss?”

  “Guns versus swords and such.”

  “What’s your preference?” Rachel leaned forward and rested her chin on the backs of her interlaced fingers.

  “Do you really want to know, or are you just messing with me?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m actually interested. I had no idea there was even a debate. I mean, aren’t guns always better? That’s why you never see anyone robbing a bank with a sword. Isn’t it?”

  “Normally, yes.” Jerry pointed his fork at her. “But with zombies, you have to be quiet because they’re attracted to sound.”

  “And we know this how?” Rachel asked.

  “It’s in all the movies.”

  Rachel raised her eyebrows and made a circling motion with her hand.

  “People are always getting mobbed and chewed up because they were too loud.”

  “I am so lucky to have you to keep me up-to-date on all this valuable knowledge in case the apocalypse happens.”

  Jerry decided to take one more shot at getting Rachel on board. “That’s the thing. Bob thinks it could actually be happening. And I have to admit, he makes a pretty good case.”

  “You’re kidding.” Rachel frowned and took a sip of coffee. “I thought we agreed there’s no such thing as zombies. Right?” When Jerry didn’t answer, she repeated herself. “Right, Jerry? You aren’t seriously buying into this, are you?”

  “No.” Jerry looked at the table for a moment, then shook his head. “Not really.”

  Rachel frowned. “I guarantee you Alicia’s not buying it.”

  “She asked how the hell a zombie apocalypse even gets started. Bob said a lot of stuff about GMOs and entropy and a bunch of other stuff. How we need to take this seriously and be prepared to do what we have to.”

  “And?” Rachel raised her eyebrows.

  “She said his craziness was mixing right- and left-wing conspiracy theories, and he had to decide what type of wacko he wanted to be.”

  Rachel laughed and pointed at Jerry. “That’s why I love her.”

  “It was pretty entertaining,” Jerry said, “but the conversation got me thinking. How would we prepare for that, or something apocalyptic in general? Aside from your doomsday prepper types, no one gives much thought to this stuff. Like, what should we do if it happened?”

  “Okay—what the hell is a doomsday prepper?”

  “They’re people who are seriously preparing for the end of the world. Nuclear war, a foreign invasion, stuff like that. There’s a show about them.”

  “Of course there is. And you guys watch it at work?”

  “Well, I don’t. But the guys have told me about it.”

  “Sure,” Rachel smirked. “You stay in your room and study calculus or something. Right?”

  “It’s hard not to watch.” Jerry shrugged and smiled. “It’s like a train wreck. These people building underground bunkers with tons of weapons and food stored in them.”

  “Just so you know,” Rachel crossed her arms, “if you start looking for property in the desert, you’ll want to get yourself an eHarmony account, too.”

  Jerry’s voice rose slightly, “I just think we should do some basic disaster preparations.”

  “And you are not stockpiling weapons or food in this house.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Look. Just for the sake of argument. What if there was a big storm that knocked out the power? Or there could be an EMP set off by some terrorists. Those would be almost as bad as the zombie thing.”

  “Worse, since the zombie thing ain’t happening.”

  “Okay. But we still need a way to get back together if it goes down when we’re separated. I’m not going to lose you now that I have you convinced I’m not a total moron.”

  “Just so you know, this conversation is causing me to seriously reevaluate my position on that. But I’ll humor you. What do we do if something like that happens?”

  “Well, like I said, the most important thing is, where do we meet back up? There isn’t going to be any cell service. We also won’t know what season of the year it might be when it happens. If it hits in the fall like it is now, this place would probably work okay. It would be different if it’s in the dead of winter and there’s no power. Our electric heat won’t work so well.”

  “We could burn your collection of zombie books.” Rachel smiled while she refilled both their coffee cups from a stainless-steel carafe.

  “You’re hilarious. But if we don’t have electricity, we freeze.”

  “You got me there. So where sh
ould we meet?”

  “Actually, we probably need to have more of a procedure than a single spot. We won’t know what’s going to be overrun or accessible or whatever, so we need to agree on something. Like, first try to get home and maybe wait there for a couple days if possible before moving to a secondary rendezvous.”

  “Oooh. Rendezvous.” Rachel stretched her leg beneath the table and rubbed his shin with her bare foot. “I can get into that.”

  “Come on.” Jerry pulled his foot away. Rachel frowned. “This is serious.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rachel smiled and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. “We could leave a message on the building or in the parking spot if the condo is unsafe. For instance, if the whole place is overrun with zombies or,” Rachel paused and flicked her eyes from side to side, “marauders.” The last word was punctuated with finger quotes before she broke down in uncontrolled laughter.

  “Hey! It isn’t funny! Bob was saying yesterday that if things start to fall apart, it all falls apart. It’s the definition of entropy.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Rachel wiped her eyes. “I was just going to bring up entropy.”

  “I know it’s not a word you hear every day, but our society and our infrastructure don’t naturally hang together. When the infrastructure goes down like that, the social order breaks down, and people take advantage of the situation. Remember the riots after the Detroit Tigers won the World Series in the nineties? They were setting cars on fire and looting stores.” Jerry pointed at her with his fork again. “And that was when something good happened.”

  “So the zombie apocalypse will be like the end of the World Series?” Rachel narrowed her eyes.

  “No, but Bob’s entropy comment got me thinking, and I did some research online between calls.”

  “You are such a nerd.’”

  Jerry crossed his arms and rocked his chair back on two legs. “Okay, wiseass. Did you know that about fifty percent of electric power in the US comes from coal?”

  “Actually, I did, because when Bob got you all worked up about the Y2K thing and you spent almost a thousand dollars on a fucking generator, you told me all about it.”

  Jerry’s mouth hung open for a second before he snapped it shut. Rachel hadn’t brought up Y2K in quite a while, and he didn’t need that subject clouding the waters.

  Rachel took another sip of coffee. “This is all academic, though, since I know I’m not going to survive anything like that.”

  Jerry straightened up in his chair and looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “What makes me so special that I get to survive when everyone else is dying all around me? I don’t even know if I want to survive. I mean, who wants to be running around fighting for their life all the time?”

  “It’s not about wanting to or not. It’s in our DNA to perpetuate the species.”

  “Perpetuate the species?” Rachel’s voice rose. “I can’t think of anything more stupid and selfish—not to mention really hard—than having a child during an apocalypse.”

  “People have been doing it for thousands of years. No one thought about whether they wanted to keep going. They just did it.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m not going to make it. I’m not saying I’m going to go running into a herd of zombies—”

  “I think ‘horde’ might be a better term,” Jerry interrupted.

  “Really, Jerry?” Rachel stood and started collecting the condiments, her movements stiff and fast. “You’re correcting the grammar I use to talk about an imaginary grouping of zombies? Maybe they prefer ‘herd.’ Have you ever thought of that?”

  Jerry swabbed his plate with a fresh tortilla. “Um, not really. So you aren’t going to go running toward a bunch of zombies?”

  “Right. I’m not going to intentionally put myself in danger, but I really don’t believe I personally have what it takes to stay alive. More importantly, I don’t have the desire.” She disappeared into the kitchen. The sounds of silverware clattering into the sink and bottles hitting the shelves in the refrigerator door told Jerry Rachel had probably had enough of the apocalypse for the morning.

  “All right.” Jerry sighed and started clearing the dirty dishes. He looked over at the dogs. “That’s her prerogative. I just hope if we’re around to give her a hand, she might change her mind.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Jerry,” Rachel said as she walked out of the kitchen and over to the couch. She sat between the two dogs and put a hand on each of their backs. “If I can’t have these guys with me after the apocalypse, my desire to live is going to be even lower.”

  “What about me?”

  “I’m sure your desire to live will go down, too.”

  “No. I mean, would your desire to live go down if you didn’t have me?”

  “Oh! Sure.” Rachel had a huge grin on her face. “That would affect me almost as much as losing the dogs.”

  “Funny. You’re causing me serious emotional harm right now.”

  “Poor baby.” She stood and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad.” She gave him a kiss. “Losing you would be just as bad as losing the dogs.”

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, Dr. Mendez.” Ricardo Muñoz pushed a bright yellow bucket on wheels through the Brasília Hospital pathology lab’s main door. “What’re you doing here so early?”

  Sergio Mendez straightened his back and leaned away from his microscope while rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. “You mean late, Ricardo. Unfortunately, I’ve been here all night.” The normally fastidious doctor’s tie was askew beneath his rumpled lab coat. He perched on the laboratory stool with his long arms and legs sticking out at awkward angles, making him look like a well-dressed insect hovering over its prey. “And I told you to call me Sergio.”

  “Yeah.” The wiry young janitor swished his mop around then lifted it clear of the water and dropped it in the wringer. “I know. But my mom would kill me if she knew I called a doctor by his first name.”

  “Tell her it’s allowed among colleagues.”

  “Right. I’m a janitor, and you’re the director of pathology. I don’t think that makes us colleagues.”

  “You’re practically a doctor.” Sergio clapped a slender hand on Ricardo’s shoulder. “How’s school going, anyway? Biology, isn’t it?”

  “I’m finished with my coursework, but I still need to finish my thesis.” Ricardo lifted the mop out of the wringer, dropped it to the tile floor with a wet plop, and began to swab the floor. He nodded at the microscope. “I didn’t know you did the actual work yourself.”

  “You’re right. Normally, I sit in my office pushing papers and cracking the whip.”

  Ricardo smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that about you.”

  Sergio looked at his stainless-steel Rolex. “But the CEO called me personally and asked me to rush these tests. When the boss asks for something, it isn’t a good idea to say no.”

  Ricardo whistled and shook his head as he pushed the mop back and forth. “You got that right. Hey, you hear about those people they rescued from the jungle?”

  “Actually, those are the ones I’m doing the tests on.”

  “Man, they’re messed up.”

  “Oh?” Sergio spun around on his stool. “You’ve seen them?”

  “I was up there earlier, and they told me to stay away. Once I got a look at them, they didn’t have to tell me twice. Especially after I heard one of them bit a nurse.”

  “Really?” Sergio sat up a little straighter in his chair, and his eyes widened. The CEO hadn’t told him about that.

  “Yeah. You trying to figure out what’s wrong with them?”

  “I’m trying. But I think there must be something wrong with the samples.”

  “Why’s that?” Ricardo stopped mopping and raised his eyebrows.

  “Come take a look.” Sergio pushed to his feet and motioned Ricardo to the stool. “You’ll find this interesting. Besides, it’s good to look at something other than the textbook s
amples you get in school. The real world doesn’t always match the book.”

  Ricardo hesitated and looked over his shoulder at the door.

  “Don’t worry, you’re with me, and I could use a fresh set of eyes on this.” He motioned again for Ricardo to sit. The young janitor dropped his mop in the bucket and stepped up to the table. When Ricardo was seated, Sergio nodded to the microscope. “Tell me what you see.”

  Ricardo leaned into the eyepiece, adjusted the focus, and examined the sample for nearly a minute before he spoke. “They act like a cancer.” He leaned back and shook his head. “But they’re well organized and uniform in shape.”

  “Yes.”

  “What disease is this?”

  Sergio let his exhale rush out of him in an exasperated sigh, then took a deep breath. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Have you run DNA sequence?”

  Sergio smiled and clapped Ricardo on the shoulder. “Excellent thought. You are a very bright young man, Ricardo.” He turned toward the door. “Now, I’m going up to the isolation ward to collect some new samples. And I insist the next time you see me, you are to call me Sergio.”

  The smell of body odor and human excrement assaulted Sergio’s nose when he stepped into the isolation ward. Carts loaded with yellow paper isolation gowns, gloves, and face masks flanked the large sliding glass doors leading to the individual isolation rooms lining the hallway. In the room directly across from the elevator, a sleeping woman—whose head was almost completely wrapped in bloody gauze bandages—lay secured to the hospital bed with straps across her body in three places in addition to those securing her arms and legs to the bed’s rails. The woman still wore a dirty, tattered safari shirt with large darkened semi-circles under her arms that mingled with the rust-colored splotches covering the shirt’s collar and most of its front. The knees of her pants were dirty and frayed as if she had been kneeling or crawling.

  “Dr. Mendez?” The stern voice belonged to a heavy-set woman in immaculate green scrubs approaching from the other end of the unit.

  Sergio nodded and smiled. “Call me Sergio.”

  She stopped three feet from him and crossed her arms. “They said you wanted to collect more blood samples?” Her tone was defensive.