“He . . . tried to grab me.”
“Did he touch your skin with his hands?”
“No.”
“Did he bite you?”
“No.”
“Did he get any bodily fluids on you?”
“Eww. And, no.”
“Are you running a fever?”
“I don’t know, why don’t you let me in there so you can take my temperature?”
A pause. “There is a safety protocol—”
“—in place,” completed Benny. “Yeah, I know. I’ve heard that forty million times.”
“Mr. Imura, we need you to tell us if the infected—”
“His name is Lou Chong,” barked Benny. “And I wish you’d tell me what you’ve done to him.”
A longer pause this time. “Mr. Chong has been treated.”
“I know that, genius. I want to know how. I want to know what’s going on with him. When’s he going to get better?”
“We . . . don’t have those answers.”
Benny punched the small metal speaker mounted on the wall. “Why not?”
“Mr. Imura,” said the woman, “please, you’re being difficult.”
“I’m being difficult? We gave you all that stuff we found in that wrecked transport plane, all those medical records. Why can’t you do something for us?”
When there was no immediate answer, Benny tried to shift topics, hoping that might nudge them into an actual exchange of information.
“What about that pack of wild boars that tried to chow down on my friend Lilah? Where’d they come from? I thought that only humans could turn into zoms.”
“We are aware of a limited infection among a small percentage of the wild boar population.”
“What does that mean? What’s a ‘small percentage’? How many is that?”
“We don’t have an exact number. . . .”
Benny sighed. They were always evasive like this.
After a moment the woman asked, “Are you experiencing any excessive sweating, Mr. Imura? Double vision? Dry mouth?”
The questions ran on and on. Benny closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. After a while the voice accepted that Benny wasn’t going to cooperate.
“Mr. Imura—?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here.”
“Why are you making this so difficult?”