Chapter 6

An hour later, Tommy, May, Jacob and Flores were back in their bus, driving back into town. Tommy had changed into a clean set of fatigues and was proudly sporting his new insignia, his head still swirling a bit due to the sudden move from grunt to officer. He had taken over the task of driving, and the rest were seated at the front of the bus so they could all hear him as he talked.

“So, it’s just after three o’clock, so Jacob, Flores, you two can head home if you want, or you can spend the night again. Flores, remember the Army is expecting you to move near the fence tomorrow. If you wanted to spend the night again, we could gather up a bunch of people to help out, and probably head out early. We should allow for a few hours of house hunting too. Hmmm, just thinking out loud, but if you wanted, you could drive around for a couple hours today and pick out some possible houses. You think you could find your way back to the mansion?”

Tommy paused to read a note that Jacob passed up to him, his eyes flicking between the paper and watching the road.

<I want to go home today and pack up. Joan and I have sex every night. (Joan = My girlfriend) I think her mother also wants to have sex with me too.>

Somehow, Tommy maintained control of the bus. The note was ... Hell, he honestly didn’t know how he was supposed to react to it. He sure as hell didn’t know why Jacob had told him that. Sure, Tommy had recently come to understand that some older women could be attractive -- thanks to Mrs. Dooley, of course -- but fucking your girlfriend’s mother? That had to be ... there had to be something about it in the Bible. Well, technically, the Bible didn’t seem to be much in favor of sex at all, except maybe after you were married. And, uh, Tommy wasn’t exactly in a position of casting stones.

In fact, he was growing increasingly worried that a similar situation was going to arise with Mrs. Dooley bringing her own daughter to his bed before long. She, umm, wasn’t really a good Christian when it came to sex, and it was a bit weird, given how the old woman -- Tommy was pretty sure she was at least 40 -- seemed to want to have all kinds of sex with just about everyone, man or woman.

While his newly adopted home was a lot of fun from one point of view, from another, it seemed he had randomly decided to move in with a devil woman.

He tried to remember what he had said to Jacob’s household. He had instructed them not to worry, that Jacob was going to be gone for a day or so, but that he would come back safe and sound ... and ... yes, he was pretty sure he had told them to do what Jacob wanted them to do. Of course, Jacob couldn’t speak comprehensibly, but he could communicate pretty well through miming actions. What if Jacob put the moves on his girlfriend’s mother? The good news was that apparently he and his girlfriend, Joan, had apparently already been having sex before Tommy had spoken with them. Well, ‘good news’ for Tommy’s conscience, at least, insofar as Tommy didn’t carry any responsibility for that relationship.

The thing was, he had no idea what to do about it, and now wasn’t the time for an in-depth consideration of free will, monster-caused mind control, his own mysterious influence over other Infected people, and intergenerational sex.

He crumpled the note and shoved it in his pocket. “Okay, Jacob, you can grab your suitcase and car and drive back to your place as soon as we’re back. May, I’d like for the two of us to see if we can find a hospital or two this afternoon, see if we can find any doctors who are still smart ... I guess we can just call them level threes now.”

“Okay,” May answered. “Why the rush?”

“I talked to Professor Adams about Karen. He made me realize that we could really use a doctor. The Professor also made me realize that ... ummm ... Infected women might still be getting pregnant, and we don’t even know if babies with Infected mothers will come out as Infected or not. A doctor could help us immensely. Heck, even a smart nurse would make us better off than we are now.”

“Maybe we should also check on any newborns that are there,” May said quietly.

“Yeah,” agreed Tommy quietly. He’d really rather avoid it, because of what he feared they might find, but it had to be done.

Their return to the house created the normal rush of greetings and show-and-tells. Holly was the most expressive, covering his face with kisses and humping his leg like a dog in heat. The two of them hadn’t been apart that long since they had first met each other in the truck.

Biyu had taken charge of the maids for the day and guided them through the house, cleaning the place room by room. It seemed like she had come into conflict with Mrs. Dooley, though Tommy couldn’t divine the details. The end result seemed to be that Mrs. Dooley had been confined to her bedroom all afternoon as punishment and kept her head bowed in Biyu’s presence. Tommy had no idea what to do about that, or even if he should do anything.

Red and Charlene Dooley had spent the day together, listening to music and drawing pictures. Charlene looked as though she had some actual artistic talent, while Red remained at a level of elementary school crayons. Dorothy, Connie and Patty had spent a good part of the day weeding the garden, and it looked like a variety of berries, melons, and veggies were growing out there ... not that anyone would actually be eating them anytime soon.

After everyone had been tended to and calmed down, Tommy dug up a map of the city and located three hospitals nearby, where ‘nearby’ meant he was pretty sure he could get there and back without getting lost or driving all day.

By that point, Jacob was long gone, and a notepad conversation with Flores resulted in her leaving to bring back her family so she could keep them at Tommy’s mansion overnight. He also used the conversation to ask Flores to keep quiet about the jack-off session during the Army tests. Yes, he was having sex with almost everyone, but it was still embarrassing.

He changed clothes into one of the sets of fatigues and attached his lieutenant’s bars. His new uniform was still incomplete, but it felt good to wear it again.

Tommy, Holly, and May took off in Tommy’s Jeep to the nearest hospital on the map, Saint Tulip’s, which they found after only twenty minutes of wandering around the appropriate area. Despite having power only a block away, the lights were all off and only a few people were roaming the halls, none of whom seemed to be particularly intelligent. No pregnant women seemed to be in residence either, though they didn’t search the entire building. They did find more than one places of carnage, with rotting corpses and pools of dried blood. The only good thing to come out of that search was Tommy’s enjoyment of both women holding tight to him, one on either side.

The second hospital, Melvin Vanderbilt Memorial, was much better off, with the lights still on, and strong smells of disinfectants and cleaners throughout the building. Over a dozen doctors and nurses were still at work -- or at least, trying to imitate what normal doctors and nurses did -- with a few dozen patients, three of whom were obviously pregnant. Tommy looked at their IDs and wrote down their names and home addresses, hoping he’d be able to locate them again when a plan was in place.

It was while he was copying down the third pregnant woman’s home address from her chart that they had their first success of the afternoon. After he handed the woman’s purse back to her, a hand grabbed his shoulder from behind and spun him around.

He was face-to-face with a woman in a nurse’s uniform, a nurse he hadn’t seen during his very limited sweep of the building.

With narrowed eyes, she said, “Baka gulummo tati see. Mum garrata vudo miss ebibi taranti moss. Bigan iweffy asloomappy?”

“Hello there, Miss,” Tommy said with a smile, recovering from the surprise, gently lifting her hand from his shoulder. My name is Tommy. And who might you be?”

“Bebebebeee glisdakle. Turble sadik.”

“Would you please write that down for me? Here.” He handed her a torn off sheet from his notepad.

She pulled a pen from her breast pocket and crisply wrote down, Tammy Runtle Yearly.

“So your name is Tammy? Please nod or shake your head.”

She nodded, adding, “Gruntle xini.”

“Tammy, I am delighted to meet you! My name is Tommy,” he said, a huge grin appearing on his face. “You are the first ... hold on. Are you a nurse?”

She glanced down at her uniform, then nodded again, giving him an are-you-stupid look.

Still smiling, Tommy said, “Sorry, I just wanted to be careful. Some people have just been putting on whatever clothes they find. But this makes you the first medical professional we’ve found. Well, the first one showing any signs of intelligence. So, like I said, my name is Tommy, and I’m a lieutenant in the U.S. Army.” He paused briefly to savor the rank. “And this here is Holly, and this is May.”

May stretched out a hand and said, “Hello, Tammy, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Tommy immediately pushed between the two of them as Tammy started to lunge at May.

“Stop!” he yelled, and all the Infected in the room halted their advance on May. “Don’t attack May. Just ignore her. Well, except for Tammy. And Holly, of course.” Holly hadn’t moved to attack, but he didn’t want her to start ignoring May.

“Well, that was a stronger reaction than yesterday,” he said, turning around to check on May. “But everything’s still okay, right?”

“Right,” May said, trying to calm her breathing.

“So, Tammy, I want you to remember this: Don’t attack uninfected people any more. Don’t attack any humans any more. I mean, you can defend yourself if you need to, but no attacking. Come on over here, and let’s sit down. We need to talk for a minute.”

Tammy was a short, middle-aged woman with dirty blonde hair and a figure that was surprisingly muscled and fit, from what Tommy could see. She was maybe somewhere between Mrs. Dooley and Patty in age, with a nurse’s skirt that came down to her knees and a blouse displaying no cleavage at all. Her sleeves had been rolled up, and she wore tennis shoes, both of which gave a non-professional appearance, but also seemed very practical. It was from the display of bare arms and calves that Tommy could see a bit of lean muscle. She was attractive in a unpolished, no nonsense way.

He asked her some basic questions, having her write down the answers, and gave her what was becoming a standard speech about himself, the world’s situation, and what was happening with the city.

She didn’t know much about the rest of the city, having lived in the hospital since she came to her senses. Overall, only a trickle of people were coming to the hospital, but since she was the only person at the hospital properly able to provide care, she had been kept busy. She hadn’t seen any of her family, living or dead, since the monster came through, but she didn’t have much family to begin with anyway. After they had determined she couldn’t have children, she and her husband had divorced, leaving her life to revolve around her job as a hospital nurse.

When he offered to take her to the next group meeting or to meet with Army doctors, for the first time she seemed uncertain. Finally, after letting her waver for a couple minutes, he definitively told her he was going to take her to meet the others and to consult with some Army doctors, at which point she almost seemed relieved that his order had solved her conflicting choices.

She lived twenty minutes away by car, in the opposite direction from where Tommy was living, but hadn’t been home in over a week. Tommy ordered her to get some rest that night, even if it meant leaving the hospital unattended. He also told her to meet him back here, at the hospital, tomorrow.

Then he shook her hand before saying goodbye. He was surprised when she drew him into a hug and cried for a minute. It wasn’t sexual, as far as Tommy could tell. It was just an emotional release.

“It’s okay,” he told her as she held onto him. “You’re not alone. You’re not alone.”

When she finally released him, he went over a few what-ifs. “The next group meeting is at noon in two days at the Brown Derby, the famous one on Wilshire Boulevard. If you need to make contact with the Army without me, make a big sign that says something like ‘I’m a level 3 Infected and won’t attack.’ and hold it up by one of the gates to the East. They have spotters who will see you sooner or later. If you need to find my house, I’m staying with some other people in a mansion about twenty minutes from here. I don’t remember the address but ... here, I can draw you a map, and I painted arrows on the pavement to help in case I lost in the neighborhood.”

After providing her with a rough map, he explained that he was on his way to check out the SouthEastern Metro Hospital before it got too dark. At that, she latched onto his wrist with her left hand and quickly scribbled out a request to accompany him to the other hospital.

He warned her that Saint Tulip’s, the first place he had visited, had been more-or-less abandoned, and he didn’t know if SouthEastern would be better or worse off, but she was certain she wanted to come.

The four of them got into Tommy’s Jeep, and while he drove, May explained more about the situation and he added whatever else he could think of.

SouthEastern Metro Hospital looked generally okay from the outside, but what drew Tommy’s attention were the normal reactions of the Infected people in the parking lot to the sound of May’s voice. The three or four nearby started moving towards her, but nobody rushed at her like they had inside Tammy’s hospital. That started to change as they went inside, and a few of them began getting more and more aggressive. Tommy instructed May to keep talking, as he intercepted any Infected that looked aggressive.

Finally, remembering his conversations with Professor Adams, he snapped his fingers and interrupted an increasingly nervous May. “That’s it! The smell. The cleaner smell at Tammy’s hospital was really strong, just like it is here. Maybe if an Infected person can’t smell you, then all they have to go off of is the sound of your voice.”

“So if I talk...” May began normally, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “So if I talk when I’m around strong smells, they’ll attack me?”

“Yes, or maybe only around certain types of smells? I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t work that way with you,” she whispered, a touch of accusation in her tone.

“Nope, but at least that gives us an idea of how to keep you safer, right?”

“I ... Maybe. I mean, I guess so.”

“We can do more testing later. For now, talk as little as you can if there are strong smells around you.”

May nodded and gave a thumbs up.

SouthEastern Metro had twenty different pregnant woman checked in, and Tommy suddenly started wondering why none of them had given birth yet.

Turning to Tammy, he asked, “Do women check in before they give birth? Wait, that’s ... What I mean is, how long before they give birth do women check in?”

While he paused, wondering if he needed to rephrase again to make himself clear, she pulled out her notepad and wrote, “Most check in while they’re in labor.”

“So, why are all these pregnant women here? There are a lot of them here, and you only had a two or three back at your hospital.”

Scribble, scribble. “Don’t know. They were already there when I woke up.”

“Huh. So they stopped being in labor when they were Infected?”

Tammy just shrugged.

“Can you tell?”

She shook her head side-to-side, then stopped. Scribbling again, she wrote, “I can at least give them a once-over.”

Together, the group picked a mother-to-be at random and, with some soothing instructions from Tommy, took her into an examination room. The woman -- white, long brown hair, maybe in her early twenties -- stayed placidly in place on her back while Tammy did her examination. Before long, her legs were held up in stirrups and Tammy disappeared in the dark nether regions at that end of the table.

It felt like she stayed down there for a long time, until finally, she stood up and retrieved her notepad. After pausing a moment looking at nothing in particular, she shifted her gaze to Tommy.