Fibre Mortem: Rhesus Factor

17

Things were changing. They were always changing but I think in the moments leading up to this, they were the ones that made a difference.

Turns out, I could make friends without them preening for me. Enter Dean "Nano" Grubz.

This was a kid who grew up on the outside, and by kid, I mean that he wasn't much older than me.

His dad worked for some sort of software company and his dad was alway teaching him shit to hack the system, well, right up until the moment his dad got ripped apart by a hungry horde.

After that, it was just him and his kid sister Louise. Their mom perished before the outbreak; cancer.

Dean, he's a gangly fella. Total geek, but his attitude and total lack of respect for my dad made him prime friendship material.

Louise was so small when all of this happened, I don't expect her to be much older than thirteen, at the most. She's a sweet girl, super timid and also very tall and lanky. She's about as graceful as a toddler just learning to walk.

Which, is partly how Dean and Louise ended up being recruited by my dad. Dean was afraid that he couldn't protect them on his own any longer. He says that above ground is getting pretty hairy.

If the zombies don't get you, the people will. Everyone's getting desperate.

Dean offered his skills of expertise and my father offered a safe haven for his sister. It couldn't have been set up any better.

Reese and I were making progress with scavenging more information but I knew I wasn't anywhere near close to finding a cure.

Nate, as it turns out, was thriving and it was killing me not knowing why he was suddenly so healthy. His bite completely healed, he began working out again...during lab hours.

I wanted to choke him during those times when I was in. Mostly, I continued to let Mary run Nate's experiment. I wasn't going to let him anywhere near my emotions again.

As for Reese and I, we were getting closer. We spent time watching movies, or reading books--when we weren't out searching for new files or tools.

We'd also come into some close encounters with our undead friends, but with us training more regularly again, it was never as scary as it had been that night in the upstairs lab.

I wasn't sure we'd find anything more than we had on hard copies of the virus, so I had to work up the courage to ask Dean to hack into the system for me.

I wanted to know if the CDC had been hiding anything before the world crashed and burned. There had to be more, otherwise I was lost and my own side project was on hold.

I did start noticing that whenever they brought in new zombies, they never even looked in Nathan's direction. It was like he was invisible to them. I almost wanted to put him in the same holding cell as "Mangled Beard"--this short lumberjack looking motherfucker with a beard that had probably at one time looked very "lumber sexual"--whatever that means.

Don't judge, sometimes Reese and I would read romance novels and that one for some reason stuck with me.

I idled up to Nate's holding cell, for the first time in weeks, and stood there whistling.

He was doing push-ups. Every muscle in his body was either flexing or just constantly in a state of flexed bliss.

I found myself going back to that night when everything had gotten so out of hand, I hadn't thought about that night since I started staying with Reese again.

Now I was practically salivating just watching the man go up and down on the floor.

Was it getting hot in the lab? I needed a pitcher of ice and maybe a cold shower. Why was I nothing but raging hormones when I got near Nathan?