“An ambuscade, if discovered and promptly surrounded, will repay the intended mischief with interest.”
-Vegetius
Andrews held back and tapped his foot impatiently as the two nurses pulled the doors open. Dezba thought the room was cold as it was, but the light breeze that came to greet them revised that assessment quickly. Dezba drew a sharp breath and realized just how sweaty he had become. His clingy shirt and dampened pants were a sudden liability.
“They didn’t explain?” he said to Andrew. The doc sighed again and shook his head.
“No. Just that they had their orders and I had mine now. Funny how a crisis works, isn’t it? Everybody has their orders.”
Dezba smiled wryly. He was sure this version of the doc would get mighty tiresome, but at the moment, he was actually enjoying it. It was nice to know that the usual process of angst and impatience could flow in the other directions as well. Somehow, it made one feel less guilty.
The doors were now fully open and Andrews stepped forward. He looked into the cool depths as the internal lighting came on, dozens of fluorescent fixtures that gave everything an eerie glow. Dezba followed, keeping her weapon close at hand.
A long series of metal tables filled the room, two sets up against the walls with another running up the middle. They passed fields and rows of containers holding all kinds of solutions and liquids. Dezba didn’t recognize a damn thing, but some of the cases contained what looked like tiny vials. Might have been drugs, the kinds that needed refrigeration. Then again, they might have been saline solution for all he knew.
The only thing that seemed particularly out of place was the large case sitting on its own near the end of one table. It was in the shape of a cube, plastic sheets being held aloft by a metal frame. The top side had a zipper on it that ran diagonally along the face. Every other side carried a biohazard image, the word running beneath just in case there was any confusion. Dezba was immediately struck by a strange sense of deja vu.
Andrews reached into his pocket and produced some rubber gloves. “Perhaps,” he said, snapping them on, “you can finally explain to me what we’re doing with this.”
He reached out and grabbed the zipper tab, opened it with one hard tug. The flap fell down, and landed on something dark and morbid looking. Dezba stepped forward slowly, Ross’ hand came up to stop him at the point of looking in.
“I’d recommend you don’t touch it, or get particularly close to it. Just tell me what the hell it is.”
Dezba nodded and did as he was told. Coming around a few feet to spot what lay just inside the open flap, he spied the hairy remains and fetid flesh he remembered uncomfortably well. Even though his chilled nostrils detected no trace of rotted odors, he drew back and shielded his nose. He had already spent far too much time with that stinking remains and didn’t want to be reminded of them.
“That’s Mance Harmonn,” he said. “Or at least, what’s left of him after the virus turned him… and my LT took a knife to his head.”
“I see,” Andrews said tritely, and redid the zipper. He stepped away from the box and proceeded to remove his gloves, but he kept talking. “And what, might I ask, is he doing in my hospital, can you say?”
Dezba fumbled on that one. Why the hell Mance’s head had turned up on the doc’s doorstep was as much a mystery to him as it was to the doctor himself.
“I was kind of hoping you’d know, sir.”
Andrews turned around and narrowed his eyes at him. “Oh? Was I assuming too much in thinking that in the midst of a crisis like this one, you’d be in the know?”
Dezba couldn’t be sure if that was intended as an insult or not. He simply shrugged. “I guess so, doc. Been kind of laid out, as you know.”
Andrews emitted a noise that sounded somewhat like a chuckle, but there was no trace of joviality in it.
“But you know who that is? You had a hand in killing him.”
Dezba nodded, held up his left arm. “Yes, doctor. Lost one doing it too.”
Andrews involuntarily looked at his artificial hand and frowned. “So who is he? And why the hell is he significant?”
“That’s classified,” Dezba replied without flinching. He didn’t know what else to say, but until he was back in the line of duty and told otherwise, he knew better than to share details about a top secret op with just anyone.
Naturally, Andrews wasn’t pleased with the answer. “I dedicate my life to helping you people, but in the end, you can’t even give me a straight answer, even if it might save my patient’s lives.”
“I’m sorry… what?”
Andrews pointed to the open doors. “Those men out there, the ones you said were coming here. They’re looking for that, aren’t they?”
Dezba dropped his head and eyed his boots sheepishly. He could see where the doc was going with this, and nodded.
“And now that you know it’s here, you’re going to be putting up a defense with that Corporal and his men, aren’t you?”
Dezba managed to make eye contact again, but couldn’t answer verbally. He nodded again.
“Ah, and when the men who are coming here arrive, do you think they’ll hesitate to open fire on your and yours in order to get at it? Is it important enough to them that they’ll kill anyone protecting it, and those around them?”
Dezba couldn’t answer at all, verbally or otherwise. He tried to nod, shrug, or shake his head, but all he could managed was some vague in-between gesture. Ross took that for confirmation and smiled menacingly.
“And there we have it! This hospital is now officially the front line in a warzone. And not just that, we also have the added distinction of being the enemy’s main objective! So in addition to bringing the war to our doorstep by involving us in their little game of hide the prize, the Mage has made my patients and me potential collateral when the shooting starts.”
He began to pace and waved his hands around to give some added expression to his feelings. When he reached the end of his tirade, he turned to face Dezba for confirmation.
“Have I got all this right?”
Dezba gave it the once-over, noticed one salient point that needed correcting.
“Not quite,” he said. “At this point, there’s a good chance the Mage is dead.”
Andrews’ face lost the venomous grin and became very sober. He raised his hand to mouth, but knowing where it just was, reversed it and held the back of his hand to his lip.
“So who’s in charge?” he asked.
“No idea,” Dezba replied. “I’m running blind, just like you. All I know for sure is, some very bad or very misguided men are coming here very soon. And even if they aren’t coming here looking for that,” he pointed to the case. “They’ll take the fact that there are armed grunts here as an indication that this place needs to be secured. Either way, moment they do that, this war is over.”
Andrews frowned at him, looked back at the yellow box sitting on his table. “It’s that important to them?”
Dezba nodded. “To them, to us… to everybody out there who hasn’t been infected yet and wants to stay that way.”
Andrews kept frowning, but quickly, his eyes took a bright quality and widened by several orders of magnitude. Dezba immediately felt a pang of fear as he realized he had divulged enough for Andrews to figure it out. The Doc pointed to the box and began to mutter indistinctly.
“Are you – is that – is he the-?”
“I really can’t say anything more, doc,” Dezba said with a raised hand. “But you get it now, don’t you?”
Andrews nodded this time around, as it was his turn to be unable to find any words. The look of near shock of his face also remained. For several seconds, he said nothing at all and just crossed his arms. Realizations seemed to be coming hard today, really hard. But that was the nature of crises. Things never came cheap on such days, everything hitting the fan at once and everything paid for in blood and lives.
All he knew for sure was, they weren’t in a good place to be appreciating such things.
“Doc, can we move this back out there? I’m freezing my ass off.”
Andrews uncrossed his arms, realized he had been insulating himself from the cold, and nodded.
“Yeah, sure.”
They stepped back into the adjoining room, where the anxious looking male nurses finally sealed the doors behind them. They closed with a squeezing thud as a whole lot of cold air was trapped inside, and Dezba shivered from the welcome change in temperature.
Andrews turned to him again, still looking humbled but with more things to say.
“We moved the patients to keep them safe from the shooting but…” he raised his hand for emphasis. “This… hospital was not made to withstand rocket propelled grenades or explosives. You understand that right?”
Dezba nodded somberly. He knew precisely what the doctor was referring to.
“You want me to try and get them to leave in peace?”
“There are a lot of lives here, Sergeant. If they don’t know that that head is here, you might convince them to move on.”
Dezba shrugged. “If they don’t, maybe. But if they do know… nothing in the world will make them turn away.”
Andrews looked to consider that and touched the back of his hand to his lips again. A grave smile had grown there when he pulled his hand away.
“Do your best, Sergeant. Hopefully, luck will be on our side for a change.”
