Chapter 78: 78 The Sound Before an Earthquake, Part Four

Zelko pushed Tabitha along through the cool air, his hand a too-firm weight on the back of her shoulder where the skin was getting thin over the bone. He wouldn't go away no matter how she insulted him. Which made sense – anyone who would date Tsuyoshi had to have a high tolerance for insults. He probably got off on it.

He pushed her far past the hospital, towards the buildings in the other side of camp that had been hidden from them for those four long early months.

"Aren't you glad to be away from the doctor's screaming?" he asked.

"No," Tabitha said.

She could feel everything inside herself turning sour. Dr Yeoh crying and hallucinating in the room next to hers had almost been a comfort for as long as it lasted. Now that the doctor was over the worst of her alcohol withdrawal all she did was sit in the room where her son lay unconscious and say nothing. How boring. Tabitha had liked seeing the not so good doctor brought down to her level.

"Come on! It's a nice day. The air is breathable. Nobody's crying or getting injured," he said.

Maybe ten metres away Freya Moon stood with the man Zelko liked to argue with – Milo, was it? – carefully opening the frozen meat locker hiding all their dead.

"We're all dying here," Tabitha said. "Some of us faster than others."

"What the hell are they doing?" Zelko asked.

Tabitha looked up at Zelko with a fake smile so wide he started to flinch and asked, "Why should you care?"

She let the smile drop when she looked away.

Freya and Milo talked, quietly. Milo gestured, wide movements with big hand. Freya nodded and looked around. Tabitha watched them and felt... nothing. Nothing at all.

Zelko pushed her forward as he moved toward them.

"What are you looking at?" he asked, his voice confrontational.

As far as Tabitha could tell, that was just how ordinary men expressed friendship with other men, so he and Milo were probably very close. And they were both very ordinary. It wasn't how Thanh and Andrew had talked. But then, Thanh had been quiet and thoughtful and Andrew was in love with him; it wasn't fair to compare.

Freya looked over at Tabitha and Zelko. Tabitha couldn't decipher the look on Freya's face when she saw Tabitha was there. She showed nothing. Jin could stand to learn from his girlfriend – he showed everything, told everything, kept nothing inside. Tabitha wasn't sure which of them annoyed her more.

"I saw one of them moving," Milo said.

"They're dead," Zelko said. "They've been dead for six months. They're not fucking moving."

He laughed, like he was angry, maybe. Angharad would probably be able to decipher it, but Angharad was always so busy that Tabitha barely saw her at all any more.

"I know what I saw," Milo said, voice insistent.

"The only things that move here are the machines," Zelko said.

"Oh, but you know, I believe this is worth investigating," Freya said.

Tabitha made herself look at the pile of bodies. Broken and scorched, like the piles of bodies she'd seen in the war. Nothing but the festering meat they left behind when they went. All of it was so undignified. She maybe wanted to throw up, but nausea was her constant companion these days. It couldn't have been the sight of the rotting flesh. She wasn't that weak or delicate.

"Since when do you see the dead move?" Zelko said. He sounded offended, like there was some story there that they were all supposed to care about.

But the dead in front of them were just a pile.

"It's real," Milo said. His voice was always nearly flat, but even she could hear the anger underneath that. "This is not like your secret hallucinations."

Tabitha could hear a soft sound, like a chain rustling. One quiet morning as they'd huddled together in Tabitha's room, Sophie had said she often heard that sound when she walked past the industrial field. This place was driving them all mad.

The men were falling into an argument, their voices devolving into low, angry sounds. Freya coughed, once or twice, but didn't stop them.

Tabitha felt dizzy. Zelko, the worst would-be-care-worker ever, completely failed to notice.

She was so tired and dizzy that she almost thought she saw one of the bodies move. With a hand to her hot head, she blinked again, and was suddenly sure it hadn't been in that position before.

"It moved," she said.

Zelko kept yelling about something. Tabitha stepped away from him and his endless loud noise, and found Freya standing next to her, gun out and pointed to the ground.

"Are you sure?" Freya asked.

The rustling noise grew louder. The corpse bent an elbow.

"Obviously it moved," Tabitha snapped.

Freya started to push the heavy door closed. Tabitha swayed on the spot, too tired to help. She stumbled, almost collapsed, and Freya grabbed her arm to steady her.

The thing inside the freezer moved again. A metallic skin grew across its arm and then further down under its ragged clothes.

Tabitha felt for her own gun, safely in her pocket.

The thing moved upright, like it was standing, and Tabitha took a step back, pulled out her weapon.

Freya finally slammed the door closed.

"It moved," Freya said, loud enough to stop the argument behind her. "I believe you. Securely fasten this door and don't let anyone near it."

"I'm so glad I had big, strong men here to protect me," Tabitha said. The sarcasm felt sickly sweet in her mouth.

Freya laughed as she holstered her gun, a sound as cute and gentle as any girl was supposed to be, but when she hooked her elbow around Tabitha's to drag her back to the hospital her monstrous strength was too much to fight against. Tabitha hissed out a complaint, but she let her feet go with the pull.

*

In the hospital Gael cried and sweated and had to be held down. Angharad rushed about the room, trying to find the thing that Niall kept yelling, "was there ten minutes ago, Angharad, how could you lose it?"

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Angharad looked up, unimpressed at his yelling. "I am not the one who lost it because I am not the one who put it down. I swear, you're even worse than when you were ten years old. So annoying."

Antoine laughed. "She's not wrong."

Gael struggled against the hands on his shoulders that pinned him to the bed, but he didn't look like he wanted to struggle. It looked more like he just couldn't help it.

"This is so embarrassing," Gael mumbled. His voice was nearly broken apart by big, hard breaths.

"No way," Angharad said. "Wearing the same outfit as your high school nemesis is embarrassing. This? I mean, it's not like you chose this, so I don't see why you should be embarrassed at all."

"Okay," Gael said, his voice fading into a groan.

"Have you found it yet?" Niall snapped.

Angharad stopped looking. "I don't think it's in here. I don't think you brought it with you. So, I guess nobody in here is getting sedated or anything, and that's all your fault."

"Then get Okada in here to look for it, if he's not too busy flirting with that mass murderer," Niall said.

"Good advice, badly expressed," Antoine said.

"Tsuyoshi doesn't flirt with Ibrahim, okay," Angharad said, rolling her eyes. "They hang out and have friendly conversations. Something you couldn't possibly understand."

Gael jerked all over. Something moved under the exposed skin of his arm and rolled back into his body. His head snapped back. A little bit of blood dribbled out the side of his open mouth.

"It'll be fine, Gael," Angharad said. "We'll totally fix this."

She had no idea how, but she had to have enough optimism for everyone.

*

On the way back from sending Tsuyoshi to where all the action was, so he could argue with Niall Turner instead of her having to do it, she walked past Yong Jie's room. And then stopped, and walked back, so she could look through the partway open door.

Okay, that let her see almost nothing. Useless! If she couldn't be sneaky she was just going to have to the open door straight up and go in.

Dr Yeoh sat on a ragged yellow pleather chair by the bed, only making noise when she breathed out cigarette smoke away from the direction of her son's head.

"Hi," Angharad said, in a quiet voice.

Dr Yeoh paused at the sound of Angharad's voice, then looked down at the floor, and almost smiled, before bringing the cigarette back to her face. She took her time breathing it in and then breathing it out again.

Then she sat up straight and looked up at Angharad. "Are you here to ask why I'm not helping with your friend Gael?"

"No, I... I figured you'd be here because, you know..." Angharad wasn't sure how she'd meant to end that sentence when she started it. But they did both know why.

"I can't keep my hands steady," Dr Yeoh said.

The hand that wasn't holding a cigarette was shaking, ever so slightly, in front of her face. Angharad wouldn't have noticed if Dr Yeoh hadn't pointed it out.

"I mean, you have kind of been through a lot." Angharad stepped closer. "Do you need a hug?"

Dr Yeoh looked back at her son, instead. "He's not dying. He's only asleep. He probably made himself sleep just so he wouldn't have to talk to me."

"That's not a no."

Dr Yeoh scoffed. "You're only a year or two older than my son is. You're too young to take care of me."

"No, but see, how it works is we're meant to take care of each other. That's how it works with daddy and that's going to be how it works with you."

Dr Yeoh raised an eyebrow. "I don't get a choice in the matter?"

"None."

The doctor's face curved into something that was almost a smile for a second. "Very well then. If I have no choice."

Angharad took the still smoking cigarette from the doctor's hand and put it somewhere safe, first.

*

Freya and Tabitha weren't quiet when they arrived, but Zelko was even louder behind them. Angharad closed the door behind her as she went out to see why, so the doctor and her son could have some peace and quiet.

"What happened? What's going on?" Angharad asked.

"Now we know why this place didn't want us to bury any corpses," Tabitha said, voice bitter.

Zelko boomed out a greeting to everyone and tried to go into the room where Gael was still twitching and writhing. Tsuyoshi rolled his eyes and barred the way.

"I'm working. Fuck off," Tsuyoshi said.

Tsuyoshi's face when he saw Tabitha in the hallway, her arms tightly crossed over her body, grew tense and hard. Which Angharad didn't get, because last she checked they were friends. What was with everyone?

"The camp is using the bodies in the freezer for some, as yet unknown, purpose," Freya said. "One of them appeared to be moving. It's not alive – something inside it is clearly moving it."

"Them," Angharad said. "A person's body doesn't become an it just because they're not in that body anymore."

Freya nodded. "There were first signs of movement around one of the joints, as well some kind of movement under the skin. Then the body rose and began to form an exoskeleton around one arm. We've locked the freezer. I'll discuss our next step with the Major. Try not to leave the hospital until we know what's happening."

Angharad looked back into the hospital room, at Gael tied down and sweating on the bed as something moved under his skin, and tried not to feel ill.

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