"Why?" he asked. The woman stopped swaying and was creeping, cautiously, into the crate. Alex wanted her to be all the way inside before he darted her, both to prevent the rest from seeing her collapse and to avoid having to haul her about and perhaps hurt her.
"Because they have full bio-monitor contact-buttons in them," she replied. "Skin adhesive ones. They're normally put inside ears, or on a shaved patch."
After a bit more consultation with Kleinman Base and Doctor Kenny, darting the survivors had been given full approval, and since they were going to be out, a modification in the setup had been arranged for. There would be shredded paper bedding in the crates as well as food and water, and each victim would wear a contact button glued to the spine between the shoulder blades with surgical adhesive. With judicious programming, a minimal amount of medical information could come from that; heart rate, respiration, skin temperature. Tia had reprogrammed the buttons; now it was her brawn's turn to live up to his pride.
"I sure never thought my marksmanship would ever be an asset," he said absently. The woman had only a foot or so to go.
"I never thought I was going to be packing my hold with canned archeologists." The packing crates would fit, but only if they were stacked two deep. Alex had already set up the site machine shop servos to drill air holes in all of the crates, and there would be an unbreakable bio-luminescent lightstick in each. They were rated for a week of use. Hopefully that much light would be enough to keep their captives from panicking.
"That's a good girl," Alex crooned to the reluctant Zombie. "Good girl. Smell the nice food? It's really good food. You're hungry, aren't you?" The woman took the last few steps in a rush and fell on the dish of ration-cubes. Alex darted her in the same moment.
The trank took effect within seconds, and she didn't even seem to realize that she'd been struck. She simply dropped over on her side, asleep.
Alex left the needler up on the roof where he'd rigged a sniper-post with a tripod to hold the gun steady. He trotted down the access steps to the first floor and hurried to get out where he could be seen before someone else smelled the food and came after it. As he burst out into the dusty courtyard, a hint of movement at the edge of the camera-field told Tia there was another Zombie lurking out there.
After many protests, she had begun calling the survivors 'Zombies', too. It helped to think of them as something other than humans. She admitted to Doctor Kenny that without that distancing it was hard to keep working without strong feelings getting in the way of efficiency.
"That's all right, Tia," he soothed on his next transmission. "Even I have to stop thinking of my patients as people and start thinking of them as 'cases' or 'case studies' sometimes. That's the nature of this business, and we'll both do what we have to in order to get as many of these people back alive as we can."
She would have liked to ask him if he'd ever thought of her as a 'case study', but she knew, in her heart of hearts, that he probably had. But then, look what he had done for her.
No, calling these poor people 'Zombies' wasn't going to hurt them, and it would keep her concentrating on what to do for them, and not on them.
Alex had been boxing Zombies all morning, and now he had it down to a system. Wheeling out of the warehouse, under the control of the Al, came a small parade of servos laden with the supplies that would keep the woman, hopefully, alive and healthy in her crate for the next five or six days. A bag of finely shredded paper, to make a thick nest on the bottom of the box. A whole bag of ration-cubes. A big squeeze bottle of water. A tiny chemical toilet, on the off-chance she would remember how to use it. The bio-luminescent lightstick. Inside of fifteen minutes, Alex had his setup. The big bottle of water was strapped to one wall, the straps glue-bonded in place, the bottle bonded to the straps. The toilet was bonded to the floor in the corner of the six foot by six foot crate. The bag of ration-cubes was opened at the top, and strapped and bonded into the opposite corner. Paper was laid in a soft bed over the entire floor, and the unconscious woman rolled onto it, with the contact-button glued to her back. Lastly, the bio-luminescent tube was activated and glue-bonded to the roof of the crate, the side brought up and fastened in place, and the crate was ready for the loader.
That was Tia's job; she brought the servo-forklift in from the warehouse under her control rather than the AI's. Alex did not trust the AI to have the same fine control that Tia did. The lift bore the now-anonymous crate up her ramp, and she stored it with the rest, piled not two but three high and locked in place. Each crate was precisely eight inches from the ones next to it, to allow for proper ventilation on four sides. There were twelve crates in the hold now. They hoped to have twelve more before nightfall. If all went well.
Thirty minutes for each capture.
They couldn't have done it if not for Tia's multitasking abilities and all the servos under her control. Right now, a set of servos were setting up crates all over the compound, near the hiding places of the Zombies. The Zombies seemed just as frightened of the servos as they were of Alex in his suit By running the servos all over the compound, they managed to send every one of the Zombies into hiding. They ran servos around each hiding place until they were ready to move to that area for darting and capture. By now, the Zombies were getting hungry, which was all to the good, so far as Alex and Tia were concerned. One trap was being baited now, and Alex was on his way to the hidden sniper position above it. Meanwhile, the rest of the servos were patrolling the compound except in the area of that baited crate, keeping the Zombies pinned down.
A second hair-raising moment had occurred at dawn, bringing Alex up out of his bed with a scream of his own. The Zombies had gathered to greet the rising sun with another chorus of howls, although this time they seemed more, well, not joyous, but certainly there was no fear in the Zombie faces.
Once the first servo appeared, and frightened the Zombies into hiding again, the final key to their capture plan was in place.
They would catch as many of the Zombies as possible during the daylight hours. Alex had marked their favorite hiding places last night, and by now those patrolling servos had those that were not occupied blocked off. More crates would be left very near those blocked-off hiding holes. Would they be attractive enough for more of the Zombies to hide in them? Alex thought so. Tia hoped he was right, for every Zombie cowering in a crate meant one more they could dart and pack up. One more they would not have to catch tomorrow.
One less half-hour spent here. If they could keep up the pace. If the Zombies didn't get harder to catch.
Alex kept up a running dialogue with her, and she sensed that he was as frightened and lonely as she was, but was determined not to show it. He revealed a lot, over the course of the day; she built up a mental picture of a young man who had been just different enough that while he was mildly popular, or at least, not unpopular, he had few close friends. The only one who he really spoke about was someone called Jon. The chess and games player he had mentioned before. He spent a lot of time with Jon, who had helped him with his lessons when he was younger, so Tia assumed that Jon must have been older than Alex. Older or not, Jon had been, and still was, a friend. There was no mistaking the warmth in Alex's voice when he talked about Jon; no mistaking the pleasure he felt when he talked about the message of congratulation Jon had sent when he graduated from the academy.