The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) Read Online Free PDF

malnourished, wasted to dry and emaciated sticks, though some are worse than others, with badly-fused broken bones, deep trenches of scars and burn marks that tell of years of constant abuse.
    It is hard to look at. At one point Ozark operates on a young woman entering shock-induced labor, performing a Caesarian to rescue a tiny, stillborn boy-child from a deeply bruised womb. The infant has broken legs and a fractured skull and could never have survived. The mother, a Canadian woman called Tina, sobbed and clawed so hard she had to be sedated to protect her from herself.
    We lose a broad-shouldered, bearded man whose name nobody knows, to heart and renal failure sometime around four, despite Ozark's best efforts at open-heart massage. He stands there in the middle of the lobby with blood up to his elbows and declares time of death, and we cart the body out.
    We lay the big guy with Abigail alongside their van. Inside it we find three more corpses lying in the back, their bodies cold and stiff with rigor mortis.
    "Who the hell are these people?" Anna asks me as I come back in.
    I don't have an answer.
    Outside the sun rises. Generators power up to start air conditioners, while the soup boilers bubble with steaming water. Old wounds are cleaned, stitched and bandaged as our three medical professionals work their way through the ranks of bodies like pickers on a Yangtze packing line. Antibiotics are administered, oxygen canisters carted in and applied via breathing masks, electrocardiogram machines watch over three hearts with irregular beeping, while hastily trained volunteers run blood tests on seven who may be diabetic.
    Drip stands sprout up like saplings in spring. Steadily vital salts, fluids, nourishment and medicine are instilled into this mass sickness. The bulk of New LA, moving under ad hoc directions as best we can, flurry like blown leaves from patient to patient, swabbing down filth and stains with alcohol and replacing foul and ragged clothing with warm, sterile gowns. We roll in folding beds from our stores and supplement with winter blankets. We offer comfort and succor to people who can barely speak, who are barely able to breathe.
    There are many broken arms, torn muscles, deep tissue damage. There are shoulder joints fused in an extended, locked position. Around 10am Ozark pulls me to one side.
    "I've never seen anything like this," he tells me in a low and breathy voice. He's paler than ever, and sweat drips down his face. I have no illusions I look any better. "Amo, they look like something the Nazis might have done, like medical experimentation. It's the contents of a torture chamber turned to the air."
    I nod and rest a hand on his shoulder.
    "I know. It's a mess. You're doing amazing work, Ozark. We would have lost at least three more if not for you."
    The compliment rolls off him. He's seen fields full of the dead walking, like all of us, but this is a different kind of thing. Over the hours that we've been here in the thick of it, I've been steeling myself to what it means, and there can be no question. This is the result of prolonged torture, of people suffering for months and years under the hands of a monster.
    I don't want to say it was Julio. I don't want to think about Cerulean, or whatever he did to earn Abigail's forgiveness. I've checked every face three times and the bodies in the van too, but he isn't here. I've seen Anna doing the same thing.
    "Shoulders fused like that?" Ozark goes on. "I don't even know if that's something we can repair. I saw a show about old religious guys in India once, who forced their bodies into weird positions then refused to budge for years, and it looked like this. Joints calcify. It's abnormal medicine, not the kind of thing you encounter even in a big city hospital. Perhaps a surgery might do it, of course I'll need X-rays, I'll need to read up on the procedures, but I'll have to crack the bones apart first with a mallet. Jesus, Amo."
    I steady the big man with