Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache

by David A. Simpson

“We have to show you.” Jimmy said. “It’s a secret.”

  “Can I come?” Scarlet asked in amusement. “I’m curious about what could be so urgent.”

  “You know curiosity is what killed the cat.” Jessie said.

  “Whose cat was it?” Scarlet asked. “And how did he do it? Did he get caught? And who is curiosity anyway?”

  Jessie opened his mouth to answer, not really sure how to start and saw her smile.

  “You stay here then, Mr. Grumpy man. I’ll go see what this great mystery is.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Jessie sighed, knowing he wouldn’t be unbuttoning her flowing blouse anytime soon. “Let’s go.”

  “Weird.” Scarlet said in the echoey silence of the lowest chamber. “Is it some kind tram or something? A gravity train?”

  “We never saw anything moving but you could feel it vibrate. It’s not on right now.” Jim said “But when it is, this whole place is filled with some kind of heavy booming sound but it’s not loud.”

  “And it’s constant.” Tony said. “You can feel it in your bones more than you can hear it. It’s weird.”

  Jessies hands absently went to his sides, feeling for the comfort of guns that weren’t there as he looked deep into the tunnel. It was a simple concrete tube, unadorned except for the big, steel pipe running along one wall. It went on as far as he could see and he could see pretty far when he wanted to.

  “It has to be some black op military project.” he said. “I’ll bet that’s why Horowitz wants the computers from DARPA. I wonder how many people here even know about it?”

  “What’s DARPA?” Tony asked

  “It’s like a semi-secret branch of the military.” Jessie said “They’re the ones that come up with the super hi-tech stuff like smart bullets and rocket suits and things like that.”

  “You mean like Weapon X? The government group that gave Wolverine the adamantium claws?” Jim asked.

  “Yeah, something like that.” Jessie answered. “My dad said there used to be all kinds of shady black op groups. He thinks one of them created the zombie virus.”

  “You haven’t even seen the weird stuff yet.” Jim said as they walked towards the labs in the dusky gloom, trying to tread softly and talk in hushed tones.

  The subterranean part of the building was immense, much larger than the rest of the tower and its stillness was eerie.

  “This window goes to the pipe room.” Tony said and pointed to a small, round port window bolted onto a steel wall. They couldn’t see anything through it though. It was pitch black inside. When they arrived at the grouping of labs, Jimmy peeked through a window and declared it clear.

  “Most of the lights are off.” he said. “When they’re here, it’s lit up like a Christmas tree. You’ll know when they’re coming, too. The elevator is noisy.”

  He pulled out his card, slid it into the jamb and Slippery Jim was holding the door open for them within seconds. The security was perfunctory, the locks minimal although they could see where some bigger locks had been torched off.

  “This is the only door I can’t get through.” Jimmy said as they passed a room with a steel door that would look at home on a bank vault. “But it only goes to the pipe. We were looking through the window and saw a guy come out of it.”

  “This is definitely not a chemical lab.” Scarlet said looking through the glass panes of other doors in the hallway. There were offices and whiteboards with complicated math formulas but no Bunsen burners or test tubes. No small animals in cages or protective clothing and gas masks.

  “In here.” Jim said and they followed him into a clean, white room as he flipped on the light switch.

  “Cool, huh?” Tony asked. “They’re from everywhere.”

  Jessie and Scarlet glanced around at the glass fronted cases neatly stacked and labeled along the walls, most of them filled with unmoving animals floating gently in a faintly yellowish liquid.

  “The people are over there. That’s kind of sad, though.” Jimmy said and pointed to a far corner where larger cases had figures lying down. “I knew the lady. I met her at the library when we first got here, she was the cleaning woman.”

  Most of the creatures were easily recognizable: a dog, a swan, a small tiger. Some of them were familiar but different. Almost a cat but not quite. A strange fish that might be a shark but wasn’t. A monkey with a misshapen head and an extra, milky eye.

  “Mondo creepy.” Jessie breathed. “What are they doing down here? Are they experimenting on them?”

  Jimmy was waiting for them near one of the containers and asked “Recognize this?”

  It was the zebra striped dog they had seen on their first trip down.

  “Is that a Tasmanian Tiger?” Scarlet asked, leaning closer to get a better look.

  “Sure is.” Tony said with a little pride. “I knew I’d seen one before and it took me a while to remember but I found a picture in the library. They’ve been extinct since nineteen thirty-six when the last one died in a zoo.”

  “Well, I guess the book was wrong.” Jessie said “If there’s one right here.”

  “Or” Jimmy said with a little twinkle in his eye. “there is one right here because they went to get it.”

  He waited for Jessie to understand what he was telling him.

  He and Scarlet realized what he said at the same time and cocked quizzical eyes at each other.

  “A time machine, Jim? No way.” Jessie said “It’s impossible.”

  “So are zombies.” Jim said matter of factly. “But they’re here.”

  Jessie shook his head and continued around the perimeter, looking at the sometimes strange, sometimes normal appearing animals. When he came to the two containers with people, he stared at them. A man and a woman floated in the preserving fluid.

  “We saw him come out of the pipe.” Jim said. “He was carrying the Tasmanian tiger but I think it was already dead. He didn’t last long. The records say he died a few minutes after he came back.”

  “Did they say why?” Jessie asked, still not sure if he was going to believe in a time machine.

  “They couldn’t find a reason.” Tony said and moved the mouse to wake up one of the computers on the counter. “I’ve read all the reports they wrote and they didn’t find a cause. He just stopped living. Same as all the animals that went through it.”

  He clicked on a list of files, one for every subject in the room.

  “Plants don’t die.” he said “But every alive thing does. Even fleas and bugs.”

  “It can’t be a time machine, it’s just a long tunnel.” Jessie said but it was more of a question. Could it?

  “Yeah, but what kind of tunnel?” Tony asked. “It makes that weird sound and all this stuff probably came out of it. I think it’s a warp drive or a stargate or something.”

  “And I think you watch to much TV.” Jessie replied absently, staring at a strange looking reptile.

  “How often do you guys come down here? You’re not worried about getting caught?” Scarlet asked

  “Nah.” Jimmy said dismissively. “You can hear the elevator coming as soon as it starts down. Plenty of time to get out. They never suspect anything because they don’t think anyone knows…”

  He cut off abruptly when they all heard a whirring of the big cable wheel spinning up.

  “Let’s go!” Tony said and they all ran for the door.

  “Just get a little ways down toward the stairs.” Jimmy said. “We can hide in the shadows then come back and see if they’re going to go time traveling again.”

  He double checked the door, made sure he locked it behind him, then ran to catch up with the rest of his gang.

  “This is exciting.” Scarlet said. “I feel like a spy. Has that ever happened to you before?”

  “Once.” he said, his grin spreading from ear to ear. “That’s how we know you can hear them when they come.”

  They were disappointed when they snuck up, peeked through the window and discovered it was only th
e cleaning team.

  “They’ll be here for hours.” Jim said glumly. “We might as well go back. Hot Rod wants to leave at the crack of dawn and I haven’t even started packing.”

  12

  The Tower

  “We’ll run some more tests but for now, I’m going to treat this the same as I would Nercrotizing Faciitis. The samples seem to have similar properties.” Doctor Samed said as the pair sat in his office. They’d been poking and prodding her for hours.

  “The flesh-eating disease?” Scarlet asked, a little dubious.

  “We’ll know more when we get the lab results back.” Samed reiterated “But I’m going to start you off with some very strong antibiotics. Your sporadic penicillin treatments may have helped with the infection but we should have you on the mend soon. Don’t worry about anything, Scarlet. Just take it easy for now, you may have a little nausea from the pills. Make an appointment with my assistant to come back and see me next week. It takes time to do the blood work properly, some things can’t be rushed.”

  “A week? So long?” Jessie asked “I thought you guys had everything here to do all the tests and stuff.”

  Doctor Samed began a long explanation of platelets and plasma and the duration of certain assessments and protocols and he could have been talking a foreign language for all Jessie understood. In the end he just nodded, said okay and rose to leave.

  The doctor thanked him again for the simply fabulous Fabergé egg as he ushered them out then hurried back to his office to shut the door and just look at it. To stare at it. It was exquisite and he cradled it gently to admire its beauty. It was his. All his. He had wanted one for most of his life and now that he had it, his life was complete.

  The phone rang and he knew it was Horowitz wanting to know everything. He sighed as he reached for the receiver. His staff had been sending updates to the penthouse all morning to keep him apprised of any tidbit of information they could glean. The diagnostics were pretty straight forward and he knew what was happening to her and how to treat it a half hour after they’d drawn blood. After all, he was a hematopathologist, most likely the only one in the world. There were some more tests he wanted to run on the samples, something seemed to be a little unusual but he could analyze that later. He had to get the egg to a safe place.

  Once he realized they could cure her, Horowitz had told him to stall. Keep them busy, he said. He needed time to think. When he’d finally given Samed his orders, told him what he had to do, Samed almost refused. A not so subtle threat about uncooperative persons being put out of the Tower had been casually mentioned.

  He hated giving her the accelerator pills instead of inhibitors but Horowitz had been very convincing. He wasn’t a man to cross. He had even threatened to smash the egg and Samed believed him. Just string them along for a week until the pills have done their job. He’d said Once she’s obviously getting worse, you can tell them the results of the blood work are finished and tell them about the cure. It’ll be more convincing if they’re afraid.

  The CEO wanted the kids to get some kind of hard drives and the boy had refused. Horowitz was convinced they would go after them if they thought it was the only way to save her. Samed was supposed to let her get worse then discover the infection came from a secret man-made disease and the cure was on the military computer. It was entirely believable and could even be true. He needed to be careful though, monitor her closely. Not let it spread too far. He was certain there would be no cure once the virus lodged in the brain. He could easily reverse the infection if they started treatment immediately, it was only affecting about thirty percent of her body. However, with the accelerants he’d given her, it would reach critical mass quickly.

  Samed was between a rock and a hard place but he had a family to consider. He couldn’t be banished from the Tower. How would they survive? Would he trade his children’s lives for a stranger?

  No.

  No, he would not.

  He had time. He would work up some fake charts and graphs, use a lot of technical terms and do his part to convince them the cure was wherever the CEO said it was. That should put the fear in them and they’d do whatever he wanted. He could reverse the spread, he told himself. They would be here all week and he’d keep an eye on her. He would call her back in for a follow up exam in a few days to ensure the infection didn’t go too far or too quickly. A few days may be all it would take to convince the kids to do what Horowitz wanted. The dark runners should have accelerated by then, it may not take a week to be obvious. He would be able to undo what he had done as long as he stopped it in time. Horowitz would get what he wanted, the girl would get her cure and he had his egg. It would be all right in the end.

  They swung by the grocery store for a few things then the ice cream parlor on the way out to the car. Jessie tried to smile, not show annoyance at everyone following them and not look like he was grimacing when people asked for a picture. He was a little grumpy about it all but Scarlet was a dazzling star. She posed leaning on his shoulder, showing off her wasteland leathers and new hair and smiled brilliantly for the clicking smart phones. He heard her promising more than one person an interview later that evening when they returned. Beauty and the Beast he heard someone say into a phone as they updated their status and captioned a photo. He slipped away to place his order while she talked and posed with her new friends. He paid for their ice cream, insisted when the owner tried to give it to him, and waited with the two cones while she finished. He stood patiently with his dented armor and dark stained jacket and watched her. His eyes constantly darted, looking for danger but when they returned to her, they were soft in his hard face. She was so pretty it hurt. The people jostling her gave him plenty of distance, most didn’t dare get close enough to accidentally bump into him. He seemed like a nice boy and all but one never could be sure. Wild animals could be tamed but you still had to be careful around them. He had a reputation of impossible speed and everyone knew those that traveled beyond the walls were a little bit crazy. A little unpredictable. It was unwise to upset those people. It took a while to escape and they finally managed when Jessie said they were going outside, everyone was welcome to join them.

  There weren’t any takers.

  When they got to the docks, Captain Macon pulled them aside and quietly told him about Horowitz’s men taking the boat over to poke around the Mercury. They thought the dog was trapped inside as they shone their flashlights around the interior. They wound up soaking wet when Bob surprised them by opening the door and charging out when they ignored his warning barks. They had to jump in the river to get away.

  “Got it on video if you want to watch.” he’d laughed. “Funniest thing we’ve seen in months.”

  Hot Rod, the boys from the Bullet Brigade and the rest of the truckers were long gone, hammer down towards Lakota with a few trading stops along the way. Jessie and Scarlet packed a picnic basket and wandered off into the hills with the two animals trailing behind or running ahead. It was late in the summer, the leaves would start tuning soon, and the world was full of life. Just a year without people and the streams seemed to be teeming with fish, they spotted deer that were wary but unafraid. Even when Bob took off after them and they sprang lazily away, they seemed to know it wasn’t serious. He wasn’t a real threat.

  They wound up at a small farm that was falling into disrepair and had lunch in the hayloft of the barn. The stalls were empty and the house had a smell of old decay so they avoided it, opened the hay doors in the loft and used a horse blanket to dine on. They ate slow, watched Bob chase rabbits and Nefertiti stalk mice. Honeybees skimmed from flower to flower in the over grown garden and birds sang to each other. They talked of the future when the wars were over. Of babies and swing sets. Of wedding dresses and best men. Their love was the same as every other young couple feeling it for the first time, all-consuming and boundless, but it was also fundamentally different. Their DNA wasn’t the same as everyone else’s. Their connection was more than two travelers meeting, two
lost souls finding each other. It went deeper and harder and was turning into a bond that could never be broken, even if they tried. Like a dove that mates for life and withers away if one is lost. Like a mother whale who will beach herself to die of sorrow if she loses her calf. Like an old couple who have spent fifty years together and die within days of each other.

  Two became one as they made slow love and held each other for a long time afterward, their hearts and breathing in synch. Soft afternoon sun warmed their bodies and cast them in a golden glow. Tender fingers traced damaged skin, curled hair and fed each other bits of olives and cheese. Emerald green and cobalt blue stared into each other and promised all of everything without saying a word.

  “Forever.” Scarlet whispered, her eyes swimming with so much love it was flowing out of her, ran down her cheek.

  “Longer.” Jessie breathed.

  13

  The Tower

  Horowitz watched through the telescope from his penthouse as the two kids came up the gravel road holding hands and walking with their animals. More tests had been run on her blood and one of them had shown an anomaly that was much more than just the slowly spreading mutated virus. Samed couldn’t explain it. None of them could. She wasn’t even human, strictly speaking. Her genetic makeup had been recoded somehow. She was superior in every way and he’d been down to the labs himself, demanding answers. He needed to know everything and he rushed from one office to the next, asking questions. He had every doctor, scientist and engineer in the building tripping over themselves to understand what they were seeing.

  He had the archivists digging for anything they could find, accessing the ancestry websites and tracing her lineage, looking for clues if it was hereditary. He had the radio station crew wracking their brains, scribbling down every story, every second-hand account that they could remember of the mysterious girl. There weren’t as many tales about her but the few they’d heard indicated she was every bit as powerful and fast as the Road Angel. He had to be altered like she was. Enhanced. Some kind of super human. Once it occurred to him, he realized it had to be the truth. It was the only explanation. No ordinary boy could do the things he did. Somebody was hiding secrets and he needed to find out what they were. Somebody was creating hybrid humans and he needed to know who and how.