Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [64]
“Something amuses you, Doctor?”
“Not especially, Cain, it’s just that—until I met you, I didn’t think real people talked like that.”
Cain walked to the rear of Ashford’s chair and started wheeling him out of the tent. “What you don’t know about real people, Doctor, is considerable. But you’re about to get a very nasty lesson.”
Twenty-Eight
Once the truck got going, Alice, sitting in the narrow backseat with Carlos and Angie, asked the girl for her lunchbox.
“I need to inject Carlos with the antivirus.”
Angie nodded and handed it over.
“Thanks,” Alice said with a warm smile.
She didn’t think very highly of the girl’s father. After all, he was the one who’d first developed the T-virus. From what she knew of the project, it had been taken out of his purview in fairly short order, and the more reprehensible applications—the ones that had made the T-virus attractive enough for Spence Parks to steal—hadn’t come into play until after that, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d developed it.
Still and all, she was glad that she’d at least be able to reunite him with his little girl.
They should all be so lucky.
Carlos rolled up his sleeve, revealing a combat knife that he presumably kept there as emergency backup. “What is this stuff?”
Alice answered while she swabbed his arm and prepped the syringe. “The T-virus promotes cellular growth. It can reanimate dead cells, causing the dead to walk. Or in a living human, it can cause uncontrollable mutation. Or in a little girl with withered legs,” she added with a wink at Angie, “it can help her walk again. If the virus is kept in check.”
Frowning as Alice stuck the needle into his arm, Carlos said, “That little girl is infected?”
Alice nodded. “It’s why the undead in the school didn’t touch her. She’s infected with the T-virus, just like them.” She indicated the syringe. “But this keeps the virus under control. The cellular growth is just enough to keep her on her feet, but not quite enough to cause further mutation.”
Valentine was up front driving. Next to her, that L.J. Wayne character Valentine had acquired was riding shotgun. Alice hadn’t had time to get his story, but he came across as the typical know-nothing punk who somehow survived on the streets of every major city through a combination of attitude and dumb luck.
It was Valentine who asked, “And they infected you with this T-virus as well?”
“Yes.”
Carlos looked at her in shock.
She continued, “They made me one of their little monsters.”
“So if you’re infected,” Valentine said, “why did those creatures attack you in the cemetery?”
“They didn’t.” Alice smiled wryly. “They attacked you. I just got in their way. I’d already learned that they had no interest in me. When I was wandering the streets, before I found you in the church, I encountered a whole bunch of them—but they left me completely alone. Even the biker I took the motorcycle from didn’t attack.”
Carlos had by now rolled down his sleeve and replaced the knife, and was starting to look almost lifelike. “That’s quite a story.”
Angie asked, “But if you’re sick, too, why don’t you have to take the medicine?”
Alice shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Here.”
Looking up at Valentine’s single word, Alice saw that the cop was handing back a small metal object.
Taking it, Alice realized it was Terri Morales’s little video camera. She’d had the thing on constantly as they’d moved through the city. It was probably the best record in existence of the day’s events.
Checking the playback, Alice saw that the last thing it had recorded was Terri’s own death.
Shaking her head, Alice looked up to see Valentine giving her a look in the rearview mirror.
“I’ll see that it gets put to good use.”
Then Alice understood.
Valentine was a cop, and cops thought in terms of evidence that could be presented in a court of law. Evidence usually took two forms: physical evidence and eyewitness testimony.
As good as physical evidence was, it wasn’t always enough, particularly if there could be doubt as to its authenticity.
Valentine wanted the testimony. She