“That’s not possible.” Joel looked at her uncertainly. “Is it?”
“It is. My boyfriend was bitten some time back and when he woke up, he could walk amongst them.”
“I bet that was a shock.”
“You don’t know the half of it. So, if you’re not a Walker and you don’t have an army, how have you managed to survive so long?”
“I didn’t have a lot of choice. Either I survive or I die.”
“A lot of people succumbed to the latter.”
“Yes,” Joel said, finishing off the second sandwich. “But they didn’t have Pointy.” He got up again. He had just about the worst case of ants in his pants Sam had ever seen. Or maybe he’s just excited to see another survivor. “Would you like some chocolate? I only have the high cocoa stuff. It’s not my favorite but it does scratch the old sweet tooth well enough.”
“No, thank you.” Sam looked at her sandwich. She couldn’t even finish half of it. “Would you like this? I can’t finish it.”
“You ought to eat, if you can. You need to keep your strength up.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I guess seeing your life flash before your eyes can do that. I’ll put it back in the drawer. It’s yours if you change your mind.”
Joel was kinder than anyone in this brave new world of theirs had a right to be. He bit into his square of chocolate and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. “I never understood why someone would want to eat this—if they had a choice, I mean. If you’re going to eat chocolate, then eat the good stuff. If you’re going to drink alcohol, then drink it.”
“Good advice to live your life to its fullest while you can.”
Sam listened to the other sounds in the vault. She heard her heartbeat again—calmer, slower now. And the gentle flap of the flame inside its glassy prison. “It’s so quiet in here.”
“Did you know a man—or woman—can survive no more than forty-five minutes in total silence? Any longer than that, and you start hallucinating.”
“The mind needs stimulation, I guess. When it can’t get it from the outside world, it creates its own.”
“Is that the reason? I always thought it was because they were afraid of their own thoughts, afraid of who they really are. I came to terms with myself a long time ago. I was a bank security guard in this very building. It feels like a whole other lifetime ago now.”
“Have you come across any other survivors?”
A cloud darkened Joel’s brow. “Some. They call themselves The Pure. You really haven’t bumped into them during your travels?
“I haven’t been out long.”
“Then consider yourself lucky. Others were not so fortunate.”
Not so fortunate. Sam had to count herself among those. Locked up and forced to research for God knows what purpose. “Thank you for your help, but I really need to get moving.” She hissed through her teeth when she stepped on her twisted ankle.
“Not on that ankle, you’re not. Do you mind?” He gestured to her foot.
Sam sat back down, relief washing over her from removing the weight.
Joel removed her boot and pressed at her ankle. “Swollen. A sprain, most likely. We can get some medicine to take care of it enough for you to move around, though you won’t be running many marathons for a while, and trust me, in this city, you’re going to be running plenty of marathons.”
“How do you know about medicine?”
Joel put her boot back on and tied her laces. “My girlfriend was a nurse. I picked up a few things.”
“Did she manage to get out of the city?”
Joel’s usual chipper demeanor turned sad and full of sorrow. He gently put her foot down.
“I’m sorry.” Sam genuinely was.
“I found her wandering the hallways of the hospital. Lost, without a hint of who she was. She didn’t see me. I didn’t have the heart to look her in the eye. We’re going to head there if we want to fix your ankle. You’ll need crutches and painkillers. I could tell you not to walk on it, but I doubt you’ll listen.”
Sam smiled. “You know me all right.”
“I know women all right.”
10.
HAWK
Hawk limped into the hallway and took a moment to check his wounds. Most were holes blasted in his flesh. The worst appeared to be multiple rounds to the back of his thigh and produced the limp. He moved down the long hallway that breathed shadows.
Half the lights down here weren’t working, the other half blinked in the throes of death. He reached the corridor’s end and checked both directions. One way led to a small room—the projector room unless he missed his guess. He opened the door and checked inside. Piles of old tape reels sat piled along either side of the room. An antique projector hunched over its quiet dominion. No guards.
He edged closer and peered down at the cinema and the dull empty screen at the end. A small gathering of people in the center, although it was hard to make out with the room being cloaked in darkness. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t see what.
Hawk clutched his rifle close and dangled his Kevlar shield over one arm. He returned to the corridor outside and rounded the corner. He came to the sloped underground cinema. Sheets draped chairs, used as beds, and would have been comfortable enough. Old clothes and general household waste sat in one corner of the room, plastic noodle cups and bags of chips in another. There was a certain organization to the place. The best you could do without access to proper facilities.
The hostages crowded the middle of the room, and as Hawk drew closer, he recognized the situation for what it was.
“Don’t come any closer. I’m warning you.”
The remaining guard had an arm wrapped around a hostage’s neck and a pistol pressed to her temple. The woman had a remarkably calm expression on her face. No doubt this wasn’t the first time she’d been threatened like this.
Hawk slowed to a stop. “I’ve come to release them.”
“You’re not releasing anybody.” His eyes were wide and wild. Any threat he made, he meant. He wasn’t in his right state of mind. “If you come one step closer, I’ll put a bullet in her brain.”
The bystanders stood with their hands up, facing the ceiling, too lethargic to hold their arms high.
“No, I’m going to do what I did to your buddies in the other rooms,” Hawk said. “I’m going to kill you. Yes, you might try to kill these people, but your heart rate will be thudding fast, your vision will be blurry, and it’s dark in here. You’ll fail to kill many. Or, you can let this woman go and I’ll let you leave.”
The guard stiffened, pressing his pistol harder into the woman’s head. She didn’t so much as whimper. Her blue eyes shone even in the darkness. They kept her in this dark hole for days, maybe even a whole week, and still they failed to break her. Hawk had to admire that.
The other hostages looked strong but not so defiant. He performed a quick headcount. There were perhaps three dozen of them, different ages, sexes, backgrounds. Lumpy shadows in the cinema’s darkness. “Are you so beaten down that you can’t rise against a single man armed with a pistol? If you rush him at once, he can’t hope to kill you all.”
“Shut up!” the guard said, aiming the pistol at Hawk.
Big mistake, buddy.
“They won’t listen to you!” the guard bellowed.
But a couple of the hostages already started edging toward him.
The guard grinned at Hawk, a headless skeleton in the dimness. “And now, you’re dead!”
Hawk raised the bulletproof vest and felt the thud of the bullets slam into it. Two, then three shots. The fourth zipped past Hawk’s ear and slammed into the wall. The fifth hit the ceiling, and the sixth poked a hole in the screen.
“No!” the guard screamed. “Get off me! Get off!”
Hawk lowered the vest and tossed it aside. Half a dozen of the hostages wrestled the man to the ground. Blue Eyes sat on his chest. They stripped him of his weapons, and a couple got a few
good shots in, smacking his face with their fists and feet. Then they released him.
The guard got onto his knees and pressed his hands together, looking each of them in the eye. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m just doing my job.”
Blue Eyes turned to Hawk. “Don’t look at me,” Hawk said. “He’s your hostage now. Whatever you decide to do, do it fast.”
Blue Eyes was in her late thirties, in great shape. She might even be pretty if it wasn’t for the smudges of dirt and torn clothes. “If it was just a job, why did you do the things to the girls?”
“I didn’t do it. My comrades did, but I never did.”
“You did do it,” a painfully young boy said. “You did to me.”
The guard licked his lips to speak, but he had nothing more to say.
The hostages saw his weakness and converged.
“Wait,” he said. “Wait. . .”
They didn’t wait. They fell upon the guard, clumsily beating at him with their fists and feet, as wild and violent as any undead horde Hawk had ever seen. Within minutes, the guard was dead.
* * *
Once the hostages were done, little remained of the guard save a bloody, mushy mess. The hostages leaned back against the cinema chairs and savored the emotions of what they had done. Some appeared calm, relaxed, and at peace. They’d worked a little of their vengeance out. The others stared into space, hands, and arms bloodied up to their elbows, not knowing quite how to process the emotions that rocked them to the core.
“There’s a girl in the upstairs bedroom,” Hawk said. “Somebody needs to fetch her.”
A stout woman in brown corduroys stepped forward “Abigail? She has blonde hair in pigtails. That’s my daughter. Is she okay?”
“I didn’t see her. She was in the bathroom. If you hurry, she might be okay. Don’t go alone. There will be zombies up there. Here. Take these knives. Stab the creatures in the eyes and come back down here as fast as you can. The rest of them will be inside the house before long.”
The mother and two men took off without a second thought.
Smash.
Something fell over and broke in the house above their heads.
The hostages leaped to their feet.
Blue Eyes grabbed Hawk firmly by the arm. “You have to get us out of here.”
“There’s no way out up there. Is there another way?”
“They always kept a guard on watch duty behind the screen. There’s a door there.”
Blue Eyes led the way. It was even darker behind the screen.
“Everyone look for a light switch,” Hawk said. “There must be one here somewhere.”
They slapped their hands on the walls at the level you’d expect a light switch to be. Someone found it and the lights flicked on, then immediately turned off again.
“I got it,” someone at the back said, and immediately flicked the lights back on.
Hawk saw the hostages clearly for the first time. They were a ragtag bunch, wearing clothes that hadn’t been changed in some time. The youngest was a little boy with mousey brown hair and clear complexion. He clutched his mother’s leg, not letting go. The eldest, a skinny man with shock white hair that reminded Hawk of his father.
They took a step back when they saw Hawk’s face.
“What happened to you?” Blue Eyes said. “You look like one of them—like a zombie.”
“One attacked me, but I managed to survive.” Partial truths were better than panic. “But I’m not one of them. I’m talking to you now, which is something they could never do. Now, do you want to leave this place or not?”
“Of course. Who sent you? Is backup waiting outside?”
“A friend of mine is working on the backup. They’ll meet us—but only if we hurry. There are half a dozen zombies outside this door. If I open it, they’ll run toward us. And when they do, the others will follow. It’ll be a tidal wave. Before we know it, there will be hundreds of them. They’ll all want a piece of you, and they’ll get it unless we work together.”
“Which means doing exactly what you say.” Blue Eyes was aware of her sharp tone and raised her hands in supplication. “I’m just cutting to the chase here. We all have family and friends in the military. We know how it works. Orders come, and we follow.”
The mother who left earlier came running into the room with her rescued daughter in tow.
“What happened to Zack and Paul?” Blue Eyes said, noting the missing men.
“We ran into a little trouble.”
“Did they see you?” Hawk said. “Did they follow you?”
The mother clutched her daughter close. “No. I don’t think so.”
Uhhhhhhhhhh.
The undead drew nearer.
Hawk moved to the screen’s edge and peered around it. In the darkness, he caught movement, silhouettes of unnatural limping creatures. Didn’t follow you, huh?
Blue Eyes turned to Hawk. “How long do we have?”
“A minute. At the most.”
Waves of fear hissed from the hostages’ throats. They shared uncertain looks and backed away.
“Now, listen up,” Blue Eyes said. “We’ve been through a lot and we’ve hatched many unsuccessful plans. Now we have our chance to escape, and I for one am not going to pass it up without a fight. This man came to save us. He slipped through the zombies on the way here and he’s going to help us creep back on out again.” She locked eyes on each of them. “If any of you make a sound or don’t follow his orders, you will be fed to the monsters first. Is that understood?”
Hawk couldn’t help but smile at the short woman’s temper. These people were lucky to have her.
She turned to him and nodded. “We’re with you.”
“I need everybody to be quiet,” Hawk said. “We’re going to wait until the zombies outside move away from us, then I’m going to open this door. When I do, I want everyone to run in a straight line. Do you hear me? A straight line. You’ll make no noises other than the thud of your feet. You’ll move as fast as your legs can carry you. You will not stop until you get to the hedge that runs around the property. You’ll crawl under it and wait at the fence on the other side. You will not climb over it. There’s razor wire at the top and if you spill your blood, the zombies will tear us to shreds. You’ll wait there until I join you. I’ll be right on your heels. Do you understand me?”
They nodded their assent but looked uncertain.
“With any luck, you’ll be with your loved ones within the hour,” Hawk said.
He faced the door, shut his eyes, and reached deep inside himself. Already, he could hear the footsteps of the undead rushing through the cinema, stumbling and tumbling over heavy cushioned seats. Some of the hostages whimpered before a family member wrapped a hand over their mouths.
Hawk drifted away from the rectangle of light that was his vision and sank deeper into himself until his feet reached that familiar invisible plateau. The red mist of Hunger hung over his shoulder as before, creeping ever closer, playing a solitary game of What’s The Time, Mr. Wolf?
Hawk focused on those half a dozen beacons of light outside. He pressed his mind against them, wrapped his consciousness around them. His body shook and he gasped. Still, he could hear the creatures shuffling toward them, bumping into the other side of the screen now. They grunted and groaned, sensing the meal to come. It would be less than a minute before they rounded the corner and discovered them.
Hawk planted curiosity in their minds, at an imaginary sound on either side of the house, just around the corners, something for them to investigate. The creatures stumbled toward it, and he hurried them along, pushing them, forcing them to almost lose their feet as they rushed away.
Something ran over his lips and tripped off the tip of his chin, splattering across the floor. He paid it no heed, not even wiping his face. He stirred only when the creatures rounded the corners and he shoved the door handle. It squealed open noisily.
The zombies in the cinema growled and turned and brushe
d the screen with their misshaped arms. They lumbered around the corner. The hostages backed up, bumping into each other.
“This isn’t right,” one said.
“We’ll die for sure,” said another.
“We should have stayed with the guards.”
Where was the trust?
Hawk stepped outside, eyes still shut, attention maintained on the creatures drifting around either side of the building. Only then did Hawk open his eyes. He waved his hand for the others to follow him, rushing through the doorway and into the silvery moonlight. Hawk shut the door behind the final hostage, the metal clipping their heel. He grabbed a lump of wood leaning against the wall—no doubt what the guards had used to keep the hostages locked away inside—and jammed it under the door mechanism.
The zombies grasped and pressed at the door, accidentally striking the mechanism and making it rattle.
Hawk ran after the hostages, a full half-length of the field away. He looked over his shoulder—not with his eyes, but his ability—and felt the creatures there. Not one of them had heard nor seen them. Yet.
He dropped at the foot of the hedge and crawled underneath it. On the other side, he found a long line of hostages, each panting for breath. Days trapped underground with no exercise had left them in bad shape.
“That’s the easy part over,” Hawk said. “Now it’s time for the tricky part.”
That drew some doubtful looks.
* * *
The hostages edged around the fence, ensuring not to touch it for fear of drawing the monsters’ attention. But there was little they could do to avoid the zombies on the other side, who growled and followed them every step of the way.
Every few minutes, Hawk checked to make sure no creatures inside the compound tracked them. At the same time, he shoved a powerful force of influence at the creatures outside, stunning them as the hostages moved on to a safe distance. Let their numbers grow too many, too fast and they would swarm like angry bees.
They rounded one corner, already halfway to the gate. Hawk was counting on the fact the creatures inside the house were making a raucous noise. It would serve to draw more creatures away. But now the hostages made the final turn, approaching the gate. They’d need to step outside and expose themselves to the undead before running through the gate out into the city to (relative) safety.
Death Squad (Book 4): Zombie World Page 9