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body, I’ll tell you everything I know, I swear. Just...we have to take care of this now. Please.” He grabbed my arm. “Help me, and then I’ll tell you anything you want.”
    I clenched my fists, actually tempted to hit him, to strike him across that ruggedly handsome face. Taking a deep breath to calm my rage, I spoke in a low, controlled tone. “Fine. I don’t know what this is about, or why you want to deface your friend, but I will help you this one last time. And then, Ben Archer, you are going to tell me what the hell is going on before you leave my clinic forever.”
    He might have nodded, but I was already marching back into the hall, fighting a sudden, unexplainable terror. The unknown loomed around me, hovering over Nathan’s corpse, the sick ward full of the newly dead. The body on the table looked...unnatural, with its pale shrunken skin and blank, dead eyes. It didn’t even look human anymore.
    The sick ward was eerily silent as I walked in, searching for the gurney I’d left at the edge of the room. In the shadows, bodies lay under sheets in their beds, mingled with the few still living. Jenna glanced up over a patient’s cot, her cheeks wasted, her eyes sunken. Lightning flickered through the plastic over the front door, illuminating the room for a split second, and thunder growled a distant answer.
    Something touched my arm, and I jumped nearly three feet. Bristling, I spun around to come face-to-face with Ben.
    “Sorry.” His gaze flickered to the darkened sick ward, then slid to me again. “I just... How are we going to do this? Do you need help with anything?”
    I yanked a gurney from the wall. “What I needed is for you to have told me why you were here the first time I asked, not when all my patients started bleeding from the eyes and dying around me.” He didn’t respond, too preoccupied with the current tragedy to take note of my anger, and I sighed. “We’ll transport the body to the empty lot,” I explained, pushing the cot back down the hall, Ben trailing after. “Once we’re there, you can do whatever you want.”
    “Outside?”
    “Yes, outside! Preferably before the storm hits. I’m not starting a fire indoors so my clinic can burn down around me.”
    He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind and followed me silently down the hall, our footsteps and the squeaking of the gurney wheels the only sounds in the darkness.
    I sneaked a glance at him. His face was blank, his eyes expressionless, though I’d seen that look before. It was a mask, a stoic front, the disguise of someone whose world had been shattered and who was holding himself together by a thread. My anger melted a little more. In my line of work, death was so common, but I had to remind myself that I wasn’t just treating patients; I was treating family members, friends, people who were loved.
    “I’m sorry about Nathan,” I offered, trying to be sympathetic. “It wasn’t your fault that he was hurt, that he was sick. Were you two very close?”
    Ben nodded miserably. “He was my roommate,” he muttered, briefly closing his eyes. “We went to Georgetown together. I was working on my Masters in Computer Engineering, and he got me an IT job at the lab where he worked. I was never about that biology stuff. When the virus hit, the lab threw everything else out the window to work on a cure. They kept me on for computer stuff, but Nathan was with them for the really crazy shit. He couldn’t tell me much—everything was very hush-hush—but some of the things I heard...” Ben shivered. “Let’s just say there were some very dark things happening in that lab. Even before the—”
    He stopped in the doorway of the last room, his face draining of any remaining color. Blinking, I looked into the corner where Nathan’s bed sat, where the corpse had been lying minutes ago.
    The mattress was empty.

Chapter Four
    I stared at the empty bed, the logical part of my brain trying to come up with a way