A World of Blood and Bones Chapter 3

"Why didn't someone tell me she was an epileptic?"  Monroe ranted.  Lynce crossed her arms in front of her and looked him square in the eye.
"Because no-one knew, Nguyen.  She was barely moving at all when we found her.  Believe me, if we'd known, we would have told you."
It hadn't been an easy job calming the girl down, and when she'd started convulsing, no-one expected it.  When her body had finally stopped jumping, Peter went to find someone who knew her.  He had come back with another cheerleader, this one with a perky blonde ponytail and watery blue eyes named Gardenia Hanson.  She'd thrown herself on the other girl when she saw her.  Later on, she explained that the girl's name was Clara Michaud and that she suffered from epilepsy.  "I have some of her medicine," she explained, rooting through her purse (which seemed, in Lynce's opinion, to be surgically attached to the girl's arm) and fishing out a bottle of pills, "Her mom gave me a bottle for her to use when she forgets her pills in the mornings.  She needs to take one pill twice a day."
"Great."  Monroe had snapped.  "Thanks.  Why don't you take care of her?  I'll be with my other patients."  He walked back out on stage; Mary-Lee had rushed out after him to calm him down.
Gardenia, the poor girl, looked to be on the verge of tears when she said, "Did I do something wrong?"
Peter rested his hand on her shoulder.  "No, he's just aggravated because he didn't know.  Nobody knew."
Presently, Monroe was pacing the floor on the other side of the stage, behind the curtain; it was a place that Mary-Lee had proclaimed to be their "private meeting room."  Mary-Lee was trying desperately to calm him down, but it was no use.  "You need to calm down, Monroe," she said, "We'll send another team out to the nurse's office in a little while to get medicine.  When Clara wakes up, we'll find out everything we need to know about epilepsy, OK?  There is no need to get angry."
"I know, I just – man, I wish I could have known, or else she wouldn't have had such a big seizure – and right after she finally woke up, too."
Something sprung up in Lynce's mind, like an itch she couldn't ignore.  "Don't you think it's odd that she regained consciousness so quickly?  I mean, she lost a lot of blood – not to mention her whole arm.  And we're not exactly professionals, you know; you couldn't exactly give her stitches or anything."
"It might have been one of the symptoms of her seizure," Franklin pointed out, pushing his glasses up with two fingers, "she may have realized, subconsciously, that she was going to have one and regained consciousness long enough to panic."
"Whatever it is," Peter said, "we need to keep an eye on this one."

Emeline stole a glance at the darkening sky, and pulled a cigarette from her pocket.  She'd parked down some old dirt road that branched off the main one a while ago, mainly to get some food and rest.  It was a long way to the city.
These things were gonna kill her one day, she thought, fumbling with her lighter.  Then, as an afterthought, she spoke aloud.  "Whatever.  It's Roberto's fault I'm hooked on 'em, anyway."  What Emeline didn't know was that, despite the deserted appearance of the old dirt road, there were Zombies lurking behind her, and they could hear every move she made.
Feeling adequately rested and fed, she hopped back into Roberto's truck and took off, dust clouds swirling behind the wheels.  She wasn't even halfway off the dirt road when a massive, human-shaped dent crashed into the hood of the truck, and a woman's Zombified head hung out in front of the windshield.  Panicked, Emeline fumbled for one of the hand guns in the passenger's seat and fired three blind shots through the windshield, shattering the glass butt satisfyingly killing the Zombie.  She watched its deformed body as it rolled off the hood of the truck, which bounced as it ran over it.
When she turned her eyes back to the road, she found that she had swerved into the opposite lane, and she struggled to correct herself.  Amazingly, she got the truck back on track, and pulled into the Thomas Lum High School parking lot, which wasn't where she'd meant to go, but whatever.
Night had fallen when she finished her cigarette.

"Mary-Lee, there's a girl out in the parking lot.  She has guns and food.  Should we let her in?"
"Yes, by all means let her in," Lynce waved the boy (who had bravely volunteered to guard the front door of Thomas Lum) away.  "We need all the firepower we can get right now.  We can't keep using wooden boards and broomsticks forever."
"Are you sure, Lynce?  I mean, this girl could be looking for trouble."  Franklin didn't know why he felt that way, when Lynce was right – they did need more firepower.
"Or, she could be looking for safety and shelter," Lynce argued, "whatever she wants; I think I'll take my chances.  We've got too many bleeders and not enough fighters to refuse entry to a girl who has food and weapons.  We need this, Jones."
"Maybe you're right, and maybe we do need this.  But we don't know who she is or where she comes from, or whether or not we can trust her."
Lynce stood up.  "Look around you, Jones.  In case you haven't noticed, this world is in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse.  The only ones we can't trust are the Zombies.  We have no human enemies, right now.  We need to forget our suspicions and work together.  If we don't, we're just throwing ourselves into the arms of Death."
Franklin sat down hard in his chair and pouted like a thirteen-year-old, beaten.

Emeline walked down through the doors of the auditorium and into row after row of teenagers, some injured, some crying, but all in shock.  People were rushing between them, tending to their wounds and drying their tears.  Onstage, several tables had been folded out for the more severely injured kids to lie on.  These kids had lost limbs – arms, hands, feet – and were unconscious.  There was not one person in the room who had not been touched by a Zombie's blood – some were covered from head to toe in it, while others were just dotted in places.  The entire room reeked of sweat, blood, and death.
A girl with a Hunter's tattoo and dirty blonde hair, tipped in black, approached her.  "Hi, you must be the one Gonzalez was talking about.  I'm Lynce Schroeder."  Lynce's face and torso appeared to be free of blood, although her low-riding black cargo pants, as well as her arms, were dripping with it.  And was it just Emeline, or were those two snakes on her collar bone staring at her?  She followed the girl down the aisle, suddenly feeling rather self-conscious in her blood-stained white skinnies and cropped black turtle neck, Roberto's two loaded hand guns hanging from her belt.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced at the people as she passed them.  A girl nursed a nasty tear on her thigh.  A boy with tawny, chin-length hair wrapped a white T-shirt around a boy's bleeding arm.  The whole scene seemed like something from the Civil War.  Emeline knew she must have smelled like blood and cigarettes, not that you could find it under the stench of this place.  She really needed a smoke, but she wasn't sure how the people who were in charge here would feel about that.  Her lighter was tingling in her pocket, begging to be lit.
Lynce led her on stage and through the tables of unconscious teens.  One of them had one arm and was shaking.  Next to her sat a perky blonde girl who looked worried.  Emeline asked her guide about this, to which she responded, "Don't worry about that.  Clara's epileptic.  We just found out today, so we're still getting used to her seizures."  Then, as an afterthought, she added, "This day's had its ups and its downs, but it seems like the downs have been more defined than the ups."  She parted the black curtain that led to stage left; behind it was a group of teens, sitting in hard plastic chairs arranged in a circle.
One girl seemed to be the leader of the bunch – she was thin as a stick and had fluffy ginger hair.  She sat with her head held high and looked at her classmates with respect.  The others stared at Emeline as she walked in – there was a tall, dark-haired boy, a lanky, scowling Hispanic girl, a short, stout girl, and a bald boy who kept pushing his glasses up his nose.  Lynce took the empty seat next to the Hispanic girl, leaving Emeline standing awkwardly, not sure if she should sit or remain standing.  The leader motioned to the chair next to Lynce.  "Please, sit."  She did as instructed, taking the seat, looking down at her heels, wondering why she'd worn them.  The tawny-haired boy from the gym came rushing in and sat down on her other side.  He reeked of blood more than anyone else.
Lynce looked at her and smiled.  "So, what do you call yourself?"
"Emeline Lucero."

The girl, Emeline, was pretty, in Lynce's opinion.  She had long burnt auburn hair that tumbled in perfect waves down to the small of her back and wide, worrying caramel eyes.  Her skin was light but at the same time tanned like wheat bread, flawless.   She had full lips that were kept down by anxiety and something else that no-one in the room could make out.  She wore a black shirt with a turtle neck that was having an identity crisis, and hung down like a cowl neck.  Her white skinny jeans were soaked from the knee down with blood that sometimes dripped on her black stiletto heels.  Two hand guns hung from her belt, and they seemed to make her nervous and to comfort her at the same time.
When she talked – about her weapons, about where she came from, about anything, really – she did it quietly, and sometimes was interrupted by a loud cough – a smoker's cough.  She stumbled when she started talking about her father and sometimes called him Roberto.
Everyone fell completely silent when she started crying.  Horrors spilled from her lips, ones that seemed like they couldn't possibly have been apart of her life, but they were.  Her father had been hitting her and raping her since her mother left when she was six.  Lynce didn't know what to say, what to think.  She'd never been in that situation, never faced that kind of thing, so when Emeline said, "I killed him!  I killed him and I'm happy he's dead," all she could do was stare at her.
She stopped talking and let her tears fall freely now.  Monroe, in all his big-hearted glory, took her into his arms and held her like a real father would.  Lynce was overwhelmed by everything that had happened that day – from finding Clara in a pool of her own blood to listening to Emeline's tragedy.  Hannah, as well, was tired, and struggled to keep her eyes open.
Monroe, still holding Emeline, called out to Kim to unfold another table for her to sleep on.  Lynce stepped away from the scene and made her way through the auditorium, past Clara, sleeping but not entirely still, past Janna and Eddy, tangled into each other, dead to the world, past bleeding and blood-sprayed students, some awake, some asleep, some struggling to remain conscious.  She found herself in the back of the packed room, lying against the wall, fast asleep.

"Lynce, wake up."
Slowly, she opened her eyes to three blurry faces standing over her.  Blonde hair.  Who had blonde hair, again?  Right.  Monroe.  Dark hair and red hair.  Fluffy red hair.  Peter and…Mary-Lee?
Lynce rubbed her eyes and sat up, marveling at how quickly the world around her came into focus.  Monroe, Peter, and Mary-Lee hovered over her.  Mary-Lee spoke first.  "It's about time, sleepy head.  It's almost five-thirty."
"Five-thirty?"  Lynce said, words slightly slurred by the mist of sleep.  "In the morning?"
"Nope," Peter said without a trace of joke in his eyes, "Its already dark out.  You missed all the action."  Lynce sighed and stood up.  Her shirt was twisted and her hair was plastered to the left side of her face.
"Does anyone have a hairbrush?"
Monroe laughed.  Mary-Lee promised to find her one.  Peter told her of something she had to see.  She was led to the other side of the auditorium, to a spiky-haired freshman with a laptop, surrounded by a crowd of students, Hannah, Franklin, and Kim among them.  The screen showed a video of a burning city, with Zombie after Zombie dragging themselves across the streets.  People were screaming.  Children were crying.  The camera was shaking.  The video ended and the freshman clicked on another one, with a similar scene.
"Where is this?"  Lynce asked.
"Moscow," he answered.
"Its happening everywhere," Peter said in a low voice, "and it's only happening to adults.  Not teens.  Not children."
Lynce nodded.  "It's understandable."  Everyone stopped and looked at her.  "You didn't know?  This is a virus.  If you're under nineteen, you're pretty much immune to it.  But it does surprise me that this is so widespread.  There have been minor Zombie Apocalypses in the past, but they were pretty much limited to one area."  The freshman brought up another video, this one in China.  "Wait!  Pause it."  She pointed at something near the top of the screen.  It was a Zombie, hanging in midair, having just jumped off a three-story building.  "Okay.  Press play."  The Zombie swung back into motion, hitting the ground on both feet and making a small crater.  "Pause it again."  She shook her head.  "This doesn't make any sense.  A Zombie shouldn't be able to do that.  The virus is supposed to weaken the body and change it into something that acts like a dog, one that wants human flesh.  Zombies are pretty fast once they've eaten, but they're not that strong."
"What does that mean for us?"  Mary-Lee crossed her arms over her chest and furrowed her brow at the screen.
Lynce shook her head again.  "I never thought it would happen, but it means the virus is mutating."
"So what do we need to do?"  It was the spiky-haired kid.  Everyone was looking at her now, waiting for an answer.  Lynce stumbled and stuttered, searching her brain for something, anything, to say before Peter came to her rescue.
"We need more weapons.  Talk to Emeline; find out if she has anymore of those guns she brought in yesterday.  We sent a team to the nurse's office today for medical supplies, so we should be fine on those.  Start getting some of these people who are just lying around here up and working on something.  Train a few to fight.  Monroe, maybe you can get some of them to help you with the wounded.  Ask for volunteers first, for cleaning up, scouting out the school, and collecting weapons.  If there's still people lying around – and I don't mean the injured – start recruiting.  We need all healthy hands on deck right now."
Monroe performed an awkward salute.  "Got it, dude!"
Peter continued:  "Mary-Lee, start asking people what they're good at.  Maybe if they can help in a way that they have experience in, there won't be any whining.  I can't stand whining."
"On it."
"Franklin, I want you to research some of these diseases – mainly epilepsy, so Monroe will stop freaking out every time Clara starts shaking."
"Okay."
"Kim, you seem pretty organized, so I want you to be in charge of clean up.  That'll probably be the easiest job there is.  Get some people together to help clean up all the blood around here.  The place reeks of it.  Oh, and try to pick up some of Monroe's medical stuff that he's got strung around here."
"Yes, sir."
Lynce stood up and faced him.  "What do you want me to do?"
He hesitated a moment, seemed to be surprised that she'd asked, but then he regained his composure.  "I want you and Hannah to start training more fighters.  We need to be prepared.  I'll help you."  The startled look appeared again, and he rubbed the back of his neck "I mean – er – if you want me to."
She narrowed her eyes.  "That's fine."
"Uh – yeah, great – I mean – er – okay."  His face flushed red and he walked off – no, he almost, scrambled off.
Lynce turned to Hannah.  "What was that all about?"  She asked, hoping the Trujillo girl knew.
"Girl, I think he likes you!"  Hannah sing-songed.  Lynce looked in the direction where Peter had disappeared.
"What makes you say that?"
"Seriously?"  Lynce had to admit, this was the girliest she'd ever seen the Poacher.  "Did you not see how he looked at you?"
Lynce shrugged.  "I get that reaction from a lot of people.  If you haven't noticed, being a Monster Hunter, I'm a pretty intimidating person."
Hannah shook her head.  "No, honey, that was more than just intimidation.  Peter has an all-out crush on you."  A crush?  Lynce thought back, and couldn't remember ever having a crush on anyone.  In fact, the only guy she ever thought about in a loving way was her father.  The idea of someone having a crush on her was a novel one.  She shook her head.
"Impossible."

Her father.  That was who came to mind when Lynce thought of the opposite sex.  Daddy, who'd cared for her since her mother died.  Daddy, who'd cried when the snake's two heads bit her, who'd rejoiced when she didn't get sick, who'd given her the tattoo.  Dad, who'd trained her for life, and for a career in Monster Hunting.  Dad, who'd locked her in the cellar as punishment for sneaking out, not because he wanted to be mean, but because he loved her.  Dad, who was probably, most likely, a Zombie now.  Daddy, who she would have to kill, sooner or later.
The thought scared her.  Would she really have to kill her own father?  After all that talk about not holding back just because of a familiar face, would she be the one showing hesitation?  Emeline had killed her father, but he had beaten her, raped her.  He had done things to his daughter that a father should never do.  Emeline had an excuse that Lynce couldn't find.
Pretty soon, all the Zombies in the school would be expelled (no pun intended), and teams would be sent out into the city.  Most likely, Lynce would be on one of those teams.  Pretty soon, all of the Monster Hunting weapons and tools would have to be harvested from her home.  Most likely, Lynce would be the one to do that.  Pretty soon, she would have to see her father, the only man she would ever truly love, wearing the face of a Zombie.  Most likely, Lynce would have to kill him.  Pretty soon, her conscience would tell her to hesitate.  Most likely, Lynce would not.  Lynce was lying down on the railroad track of Pretty Soon, and Most Likely was a train, approaching quickly, vomiting black smoke.  Pretty soon, the train would come.  Most likely, Lynce would be run over.
She thought about it the entire time they were training new fighters.  Hannah noticed that she was distracted, asked her about it.  Lynce told her.  Hannah had something to say.  "The thought bothers me, too.  Mama may have beaten me and Molly, but I still love her.  She still loves us, I think.  If I have to kill her, I might overreact, do to her was I did to the Coach.  I don't want to do that to Mama."  An angry Ow! sounded from the crowd of fighters-in-training.  "I'd better go see what that is – I'll talk later, okay?"  Lynce nodded absently.
If Peter noticed anything different about the Hunter, he didn't say anything.  Lynce didn't know why this bothered her, but it did.