Chapter Four

  They captured the supply depot without any major hitches. After Command called the all-clear, a couple of field techs in blue biocontainment suits hurried over to Zeb. They cut big rectangular pieces from a roll of red plastic sheeting printed with biohazard symbols, then used matching red tape to hermetically seal Zeb's uniform where the slugs had entered and exited his torso and leg.

  Zeb tried to stand as still as he could while the techs worked, distracting himself by watching some intelligence agency types come in to question a line of hooded, zipcuffed prisoners. Dressed in khakis, polos, and ball caps, the spooks might've been mistaken for embedded journalists, if newsbloggers were built like triathletes and carried suppressed PDWs in their camera bags. They were working around and inside the processing building where the Zetas hadn't needed to enter, so they didn't wear much biohazard gear, just surgical gloves, elastic shoe covers, and those creepy, transparent contaminant masks that looked like a jellyfish stuck on your face. The spooks pulled one guy aside, zipped him into a ventilated biobag, and loaded him into the back of a civilian SUV like a sack of grain.

  The techs finished up and moved on to deal with other soldiers, so Zeb took a knee and watched the spooks finish their work. They entered the processing building to do a sweep for useful physical intel, then used handheld spherical scanners to hi-def record the site. After that, they chucked their protective gear into a red waste container, gave the thumbs up, climbed into their SUV, and cleared out.

  A couple of science geeks in their spaceman-white biosuits approached and signaled for Zeb to follow them. They didn't need to say anything. Everyone got poked and prodded after every mission--there was no avoiding it--but getting wounded meant Zeb would be among the first in line for Medical Monitoring. He wasn't sure if the red patches on his uniform were more like a badge of courage, a scarlet letter of shame, or simply a priority shipping label for discount crapware.

  As Zeb walked with the geeks to Med Monitoring, the cleaners in their yellow biosuits appeared, accompanied by more astronaut-suited geeks with their tweezers, ziploc bags, and video cameras. One crew was collecting samples over where Zeb had been hit and then taken cover by the truck. Afterwards, they’d blowtorch the whole area. If there were places the cleaners couldn’t burn, they'd spray it down with corrosive sterilants. But it was usually easier just to burn everything.

  Medical Monitoring was a large, white tent with mil-grade power gen and satellite comms, airlock vestibules, and plastic walls that bowed inward from negative pressure, like a wedding venue designed by Space-X and the Centers for Disease Control.

  One of the geeks unzipped the outer door, they entered the vestibule, and then the other geek closed it behind them. They opened the inner door and went inside.

  Zeb knew the drill. He took off his helmet, weapons and gear, and even his boots and stowed them in an empty bin by the door, noted the bin's number, and then headed to its matching exam table--the tables corresponding to any full bins would already be occupied by other Zetas. Zeb lay down on the thick slab of white plastic and anonymous hands went to work all over him, peeling back the plastic and tape on his belly and thigh. Hard objects pressed on, around, and inside his wounds. A bright light shined directly into each of his eyes, then moved sideways and back again as he tracked it. Voices all around him, speaking to each other and narrating for the videocams, but not talking to him. They just worked on him like a car in the shop.

  "Wound A, abdominal anteroposterior, right side entry well-defined..."

  "Ultrasound reveals full penetration, large caliber... half dozen frags... Extracting one... copper jacketed. Okay for MRI."

  Zeb remembered something about steel armor-piercing slugs and gigantic magnets being a bad combo, but he bet that they didn't really care if the bullet fragments moved around or got hot inside him. They just didn't want to break their fancy machine.

  "Drainage sample. Tissue cavity sample."

  "Wound B left quad, no femoral involvement... clean exit..."

  Someone pressed a light-emitting device against his skin in several places. “Neuromelanin, selenomelanin within pseudo-Griscelli modeling... myosin-Va/Vb titer pending...”

  Zeb started to tune them out. They really should have some relaxing music or something. It would be better than listening to these eggheads and their nerdtalk. Last week, a Zeta soldier had shared some music to Zeb’s tablet, some kind of country music. Zeb hadn’t remembered hearing it before, but had hated it right away. Then the guy had him listen to a rap song and that was even worse, bordering on painful. They’d tried a bunch of different music and Zeb had hated everything. Had he lost his taste for music along with everything else? He had a vague memory of seeing a live band in a dark club or a bar, and had the impression that he’d enjoyed it.

  "Roll onto your side... "

  Finally, the soldier had played some instrumental music for him, some kind of electronic dance music, and that had finally hit the spot. Maybe it was the lyrics, the words in the other music that had bothered him.

  A voice barked, "Soldier. On your side."

  Zeb rolled onto his left side and hands moved at his back, peeling away the taped plastic there. More poking prodding, instruments and maybe fingers.

  "Sacral exit, large cavitation, two inch by three inch... minimal drainage... fungating necrosis looks good, active to full depth."

  Zeb quietly hummed the tune of that electronic song, doo-doo-doo... He should ask that guy for more of that music.

  "Tissue sampling at zero, minus one, minus two inches."

  Zeb felt a little itch at his lower back and one of the geeks said, "Lumbar puncture good. CSF collection good."

  "Run them to the lab."

  "Soldier. On your back."

  Zeb didn't hesitate this time, settling onto his back. The geeks strapped down his torso and limbs, and then immobilized his head inside a plastic contraption that looked like a cross between a flowerpot and a birdcage. He felt the feather touches of needles being inserted into his arms, neck, and inner thigh. Doo-doo-doo, Zeb hummed.

  "Radiotracers, go... Okay, let's get him scanned."

  The table moved under Zeb, wheels squeaking on the hard floor. LED lights on the tent ceiling flowed down across his field of vision like glowing rain. They came to a stop where a giant white donut towered above and behind his head.

  "PET-fMRI initiate."

  Electric motors whined and the table started sliding back into the middle of the donut.

  While the huge machine did its thing, one of the geeks started the psych exam, "Soldier. Serial and rank." It was a question, but without the inflection of a request. Like reading a phone book.

  "Z-B0840, O-3," Zeb answered. He didn't have a name anymore, couldn’t remember his real name from before. Just a serial number. But they allowed and, in fact, encouraged nicknames. Helped with cognitive cohesion or something. So Zeb it was.

  "Unit and position."

  "1st platoon--Raven. 4th squad. Squad leader."

  "Specializations."

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  "Special ops meat eater. Airborne, amphibious, combat search and rescue, that old time rock and roll."

  "Raven4 leader, what happened today?"

  They knew what happened. They just wanted to check his recall and state of mind. "Went for a nature walk. Killed some Bolies. Got shot in the process. Here I am."

  "How did it feel, receiving the wounds?"

  "Like hardly anything."

  "The hypoalgesia, describe it."

  "I dunno. Kind of far away. Like it was someone else's body. Hell of a lot better than the last time I got shot." Zeb remembered his tours in Central Africa, Multistan, and Venezuela. He wouldn't have been much in the way of a soldier without all that. Somehow, they'd made sure he'd still remember all the combat and training. The concrete feel of a weapon in his hands, the sound of boots crunching over sand and rocks, the roar and push of rotor downdraft all around him. As clear as yesterday. But the rest, the in-between parts and whatever came before--that was mostly a blur. Especially the people. Who were these guys Zeb had fought alongside? He couldn’t remember their names or what they’d looked like. Remembering those things didn’t contribute to Zeta Company’s mission. Likewise with the person Zeb used to be. All Zeta Company needed now was the part of him that was a soldier, a weapon.

  "Who is the Commander-in-Chief?"

  "President Card." The guy was a straight up, holier-than-thou asshole. Zeb knew it. Everybody knew it. Nobody cared. A man of few words, and those few tended to be prudish and unpleasant. But he promised order and security in a scary, chaotic world, which Zeb supposed meant something, or at least it did to enough people, including the people who really ran things.

  "How many degrees in a quadrant?"

  "90."

  "What day is it?"

  Zeb started to answer, realized he didn't have the word for it.

  "It's... the day after Monday."

  "What day is that?"

  He knew the answer. It was right there, on the tip of his tongue. "I know it. Just give me a fucking second."

  But the exam had already moved on. "Hometown," the geek droned.

  Zeb remembered growing up somewhere with cold winters, hot summers, and wide open spaces. But he didn't so much remember the actual growing up, because that would mean remembering the chain of events and experiences. What he remembered was just snippets, isolated scenes without the overall picture of how they fit together. Random impressions instead of specific memories. Like how, in a dream, there's a person you know is your friend or enemy, but without knowing why. Same with his parents—-nameless, their faces were blurs, but he remembered how they felt to him. His mother, tall and dark, dad was a big man with a big smile, maybe bald? He wasn't sure. Zeb thought they'd been young, but of course they would've been when he was little. He didn't remember much else from before the transition. He was okay with that. Mostly.

  "I dunno. Middle of the country, I guess?" he answered. "Is that right?"

  No response, of course. This wasn't about answering the questions correctly. They'd shown him his own file early on, the scant information left unredacted. Both parents dead. No siblings or close family. They probably felt it was important for him, for all of them, to know there was nobody waiting for them at home. No life back there. The Zetas had each been chosen not just for their skills, but because they were orphans. Men and women with no family but the military, and nothing to live for but the flag. In their rah rah speeches, the generals made a big deal about how the country was depending on them, but the funny thing is, there wasn't a soul in the world who would miss them.

  "Mild anomic aphasia noted. Psych baselining intact."

  Baselining. That's the nice name they put on how Zeta soldiers couldn't remember hardly anything about their lives from before, everything in the rearview mirror flattened into a vast, featureless plain. Baseline zero. They said it was an unfortunate, unavoidable side effect of the transition process. Maybe that was even true.

  The table had reversed its movement now, pulling him out of the giant donut.

  "Scan results... Neoplastic mycosis ramping nicely at wound sites. Motor pathways solid. Frontal lobe lesions and spongiform degradation present. Neuron cannibalization increasing within models."

  "CSF results?"

  "Glial cell uptake matches projections for the total wound volume. Viroid and prion counts not in yet."

  "What's our time to overdrive?"

  "Hang on... time since injury and amount of damage... 30 minutes to threshold. The clock is ticking."

  "Okay, this one's good to go. Get him to Revitalization."

  They removed the plastic cage from around Zeb's head and released the straps holding him to the table. As he sat up, one of the geeks stuck a wide piece of yellow tape to his chest and wrote on it with a magic marker, then did the same on his back. Zeb looked down to see a timestamp written in 24 hour format, presumably 30 minutes from now. It took him a few minutes to get his boots and helmet on and he didn't bother strapping his load-bearing harness back on, just slinging his equipment over one shoulder.

  Zeb emerged from the medical tent, and was met by two whitecoats who would escort him to Revitalization. He couldn't tell if they were the same two who'd brought him to Med Monitoring, and he didn't care. The yellow tape meant they would not fuck around, that he absolutely had to be in Revitalization by the indicated time.

  Zeb's body could repair pretty much any injury short of massive damage to his brain, but it did some nasty shit in the process, consuming something the geeks called glial cells. The worse the injury, the more got eaten up. Rations provided the necessary resupply of cells, but if this external fuel was missing, Zeb's own brain would be cannibalized by the repair process, causing brain damage, temporary at first, but permanent if it went on too long.

  Zeb only needed to eat every day or two for normal upkeep of his body, not that different from a regular person. With a mild injury, he might need to refuel within a few hours. Today he had less than an hour. Zeb imagined that if he got really banged up, it might only be minutes before his brain went to mush.

  But there’s no reason a soldier would skip rations, because they were tasty as hell. And if the tissue repair process went too far without external fuel, he'd go into overdrive, an enhanced survival mode that kicked up his craving to refuel his body in order to protect his brain.

  One whitecoat walked in front of Zeb, leading the way, and the other followed behind. Zeb imagined the geek's eyes focused intently on him from behind, watching for any unusual behavior, hesitation or confusion, a faltering of step, maybe stealing an occasional glance to check his timepiece.

  Zeb intentionally let out a small grunt, and the geek in front of him twitched his suited head to the side, breaking stride for a half step before continuing on. Zeb smirked to himself, hidden behind his visor. The constant examinations and monitoring that the whitecoats did was necessary. They were just doing their jobs. Maybe it was easier for the geeks to maintain a professional distance from the Zeta subjects they were being employed to study. Maybe they were just straight-up scared of the Zetas. Sure, Zeb could understood all that, but he didn't have to like it, or them.

  They entered the vestibule of the Revitalization Unit, and the lead whitecoat unzipped the inner door and gestured Zeb inside. Zeb couldn’t really see their faces through the plastic visors of their biosuits, but he imagined they were probably pretty eager to get him inside and get the hell out of there.

  Most of the Zetas had stopped referring to Revitalization by its official name. Now, it was just the Red Tent. Some of the real jokers called it the Snack Shack.

  About a dozen other Zetas were inside with their helmets off, all guys except one woman. She was Z-R-something or another, but she went by Sara. He undid the latches of his helmet, loosened the silicone neck seal and separated it from his fatigues. He hung his helmet and gear on hooks next to the door and took a seat on one of the benches arranged in a U-shape facing the back of the tent. All the other troopers had also taken hits. Some in the torso, like Zeb, others in the arms or legs. One guy looked like he'd been fragged up pretty good, pieces of red tape up and down the whole front of his body like he’d caught shrapnel; Zeb remembered hearing a few solid concussions during the firefight, maybe grenades, or even a claymore mine.

  Nobody said anything. The others were probably also having problems with their words. A couple guys were totally out of it, their heads tilted back, just staring at the ceiling of the tent. Even if they could talk, there wasn't anything to say. They were all intent on just one thing.

  Zeb closed my eyes and lights immediately began to swim in his vision. He opened his eyes and the lights kept going. Things were starting to get really funky around the edges, like he was coming on to a party drug. He went back to the training, how they were supposed to deal with injuries. Stay calm, repeat your serial and unit. Do simple math in your head. Z-B0840. Zeta Company. Raven platoon. Squad 4. Z-B... shit... Zeta Company. Raven platoon. Squad... which squad... 2 plus 2 is 4. 3 plus 3 is... what is it...

  A large flap at the back of the tent opened. A half dozen Bolies with their hands zipped behind their backs were shoved inside the tent and then the flap closed up again. They couldn’t see anything because of the hoods over their heads and they instinctively clustered together. But they could smell the Zetas, and they started jabbering away in Spanish peppered with English. “Dónde estamos... please... lo que está pasando... you no can do this...”

  Zeb's jaw started moving and his normally dry mouth was wet with something that wasn’t really saliva any more. Pavlov was probably jerking off in his grave right then. Zeb barely remembered who or where he was. All he knew was that he needed to eat. Without meaning to, he started moaning. Oh god, I can't help it, he thought. And then the other guys started moaning, too.

  The Bolies started screaming. A few fell to their knees, sobbing like children, choking with fear inside their hoods, “Ay Dios mio... Jesus ayudame...”

  Zeb stood up and stepped toward them, arms reaching forward.