“HOLD UP!” Alex said, close to a shout. “Didn’t you asshats hear me? We don’t have time for any Agatha Christie bullshit. Just watch your backs and stay in contact. We need to get this show on the road.” She spread a cop stare over the whole group, and I could tell she was good at her job. I was ready to sprint to the other end of the floor.
“Okay, okay,” I said, “but definitely do as she says and keep your eyes open. Anyone shows up, you call us, and we’ll come running.” I held up our walkie-talkie.
“About time,” Alex said.
Chapter 21
The Conversation
“Why do you want to know about Jason Carter?” Kara asked, feeling a nervous twinge in her stomach.
“I know a great many things,” the dark man said. “Like he is immune to the zombie virus.”
“Who are you?” Kara asked. Until then, she hadn’t moved from her chair, but she shot to a standing position and then took a short step away from the dark man.
“Well, I can be a friend,” the dark man said. “It looks like you need one because your old ones have let you down.”
“I’m okay on my own,” she said as she wrapped her arms around her middle.
“Are you really? Do you like what you’ve become?”
She lifted one of her hands and examined her gray flesh and the broken and bloody knuckles, a result of raising the accordion door. She knew enough that she should be feeling a great deal of pain, but also knew she wasn’t.
“What am I?” She asked.
“You seem like something entirely new. Something interesting, but also someone totally isolated and on your own.”
While she didn’t feel pain, her emotions were still simmering away. The most prevalent one was anger, but she wasn’t sure why and who she was angry with.
“I don’t mean to be a bore, but you didn’t answer my question about Jason Carter. Is he still alive?”
She dropped her head and once again wrapped her arms around her middle for comfort. “Jason died.”
The dark man was silent, but he continued to gaze on Kara. His eyes bore into her like a drill, and she felt as if he actually might be seeing into her thoughts. Maybe even reading her mind.
“Did the doctor find a cure before Jason Carter died?”
“Why are you asking me these things?” She snapped off the question.
“A cure would be a very important discovery, wouldn’t it?”
She was quiet for a few seconds, recalling Jason’s final moments and the way he has sacrificed himself to their mission. The feeling of loss seemed remote, though, like a long distant memory rather than just a few weeks. She wondered if she was losing more and more of herself to what she had become.
“It wasn’t a cure,” she said. “It was only a vaccine.” She wasn’t sure why she answered him. She just felt a compulsion to do so.
“So, it only prevents people from turning into something undead?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“So, there is no cure?”
“No. At least not here,” she said. “There is another team working on something. It might be a cure, but they haven’t made much progress.”
“Interesting,” the dark man said, then he let the silence stand between them for a few seconds. Kara watched dust motes dance in the dim shafts of light streaming through the windows.
“What about Joel Hendricks? Is he still alive?”
Kara dropped her arms to her side and stood up straight. “Why do you want to know about him?”
“He is a dangerous man,” the dark man said, his red eyes boring into Kara’s psyche. She felt more than a little unsettled by those eyes.
“He is not dangerous,” she replied defensively, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction behind those words. Her thoughts seemed fuzzy and broken in places.
“I’m not so sure about him. How many people around him have died? Too many, don’t you think? And what about you? Why are you here all by yourself, when he is safe and sound inside the research building? Would you be here if it weren’t for him? Didn’t you want to stay south of here? You’d be safe with that old man down there, wouldn’t you?”
The assault of his questions made her feel dizzy. His accusations against Joel almost made sense. She had wanted to stay with Ross, but Joel had talked her into coming north with the rest of them.
Would she be here in this room, in this condition, if she had stayed behind?
“Wasn’t it him that drug you along on this so-called ‘holy mission?’”
She tried to find her words, but her thoughts became muddled and confused. Her tongue felt thick and unruly. Between the two feelings, she wasn’t able to form a coherent response, so instead, she remained silent for a few seconds. It took that much time to quell the confusion in her mind.
“Why are you saying these things? What are all these questions about?”
“Well, because I can help you,” he said as he stepped closer to her, his face radiating caring and charm. “You may not believe this, but I feel your suffering. You matter to me, and it pains me to see you this way.” The red glow behind his eyes was completely gone now and she saw only a caring look in his eyes. “Please, let me help you.”
“You can’t help me,” she said as she looked down to the floor. “No one can.”
“You are not beyond help,” he said. “And I think I might be the only one who can help you.”
When she looked up, she saw that he was looking at her and his expression was a juxtaposition of pain and compassion. They stood like that for a few seconds until his lips parted into a reassuring smile.
She was sure now that she had never seen a more handsome man. But he was more than that. He cared about her. He had her best interest at heart. Didn’t he?
“What can you do for me?” She asked, but her voice was almost a whisper.
“I can turn you back into what you want to be. What you were meant to be. Do you want that?”
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was barely audible.
“And what about your child? Do you want to know that it is really okay and healthy?”
“Yes.” She wanted to add the words, ‘more than anything,’ but she had no strength to get those words out. She wasn’t even sure how she was still on her feet. Along with being numb, her legs felt weak and without much substance. Her head felt light as if she might pass out at any moment.
“All you have to do is one thing for me,” he said and was only inches away from her face. His scent was a combination of a comforting wood fire and cinnamon.
“What...what is...what are you talking about?” She could barely form the words now.
“I’ll tell you when the time is right,” he said. He reached out one of his hands and caressed her cheek. She leaned into the touch, almost collapsing into him, but he withdrew his hand.
“Rest,” he said, and she fell back into her chair looking like a puppet slowly being lowered down. She could barely keep her eyes open. Somewhere between long blinks, she lost him. It was as if he had just disappeared into thin air and she fell back into her trance state, feeling somewhat comfortable and safe. Almost human.
Chapter 22
Encounters with the Dead
There’s nothing like starting your day with non-stop zombie killing.
The set-up was the same as before, only Brother Ed had taken Kara’s place with Richard on the decoy team. Their job was to draw a mass of zombies to the stairwell on the north side of the building. To do this, they banged on the doors, yelled, and did whatever it took to get the zombie’s attention. It wasn’t hard work, but zombies are dumb, so it took nearly forty-five minutes to get their stairwell filled with the undead.
It was Alex’s and my job to lure the strays into our stairwell and then into our killing zone. This was a delicate job that required some finesse.
“Hey, little zombie,” I said as I poked my head out the doorway, “wanna come play?”
“So, that’s how the master does it?
” Alex asked over my shoulder.
“Don’t knock it,” I replied. “It works.”
The zombie, whose attention I was trying to grab, slowly swiveled its head in my direction. And it was a nasty-looking head. One of its ears were missing, and deep gouges ran from its forehead to its chin on one side of its face. But it didn’t care about its beauty or not. It only cared that food was calling its name.
It was on the landing just below us, and it started up at a shamble up the stairs toward us. Another zombie, not wanting to be left out, followed the first one and Alex and I had our first patrons at the all you can eat buffet.
“Let’s step back now and let them come to us,” I said as I pushed myself away from the doorway. As planned, Alex stepped to my left, and I moved to the right. It would do us no good if one of us brained the other one with our hand weapons.
“Come on, little doggies,” I said, coaxing the zombies along. I even added a little whistle.
“Is that necessary?” Alex asked.
“No, but it feels good.”
The not so beautiful zombies stumbled through the doorway, looking for something ready to eat. The first one caught me first with its eyes and started toward me.
“Come to poppa, you ugly son of a bitch,” I said and any humor I had felt left me as I thought of Kara and what these undead bastards had done to her.
Usually, I waited for them to come to me, but with this one, I surged forward, my bat drawn back. It didn’t register me as a threat, only as food. Well, too bad for it, I thought. You should really wise up because I’m about to knock your head off.
It raised its arms but a little preemptively as it clutched at me even though I was way out of its grasping area. I lunged forward and broke the perimeter in less than two seconds and my bat connected with its forehead in a bone-crunching impact, caving in its skull and ending it forever.
Alex’s zombie was a small impish thing wearing a red dress. One of its legs had been mangled somehow, so it limped along toward her.
I saw Alex tense up as she waited for it as it slowly closed on her.
“This is taking too long,” I said, and I whirled around and started toward it from behind.
Alex was so locked in on the zombie that she didn’t register me approaching the zombie from behind. Fortunately for me, the zombie didn’t notice me either.
I wasn’t running, but with its mangled leg, I was able to catch up easily and club the undead thing from behind. I felt my pulse pounding away in my ears like the beat of a war drum.
“Hey!” Alex said. “That one was mine.”
But I barely heard her as I continued to pound on the deader with my bat, cracking bones and pulping muscle and flesh. My bat went up and down, crashing down on the undead thing over and over again.
Some noise tickled my ear, but it seemed far away as I continue to beat on the zombie.
“JOEL!” Alex screamed from just three feet away from me. That’s when I stopped my onslaught. The zombie was a bloody, pulpy mass on the floor. I was on the edge of hyperventilating when I looked at Alex.
“Hey, buddy,” she said. “It’s dead and more than dead.”
I just stared at her blankly.
“I’ve been there,” she said as she locked her eyes on mine. “When I lost Rebecca, I was nearly out of my head with grief and totally pissed off, but if you don’t have your head in the game here, one of us could get killed. Maybe both of us. So, I need to know if you have your shit locked down. Okay?” She nodded her head slightly for emphasis.
The bloodlust that had been pounding through my veins slowly subsided and I felt very, very tired, but I said, “I have my shit locked down. I will be okay.”
“If you’re not, let’s call it a day until you are.”
“I’m ready,” I said, but a little of the heat of anger rose up again.
She started to say something, but I saw her head jerk up as she looked past me. “You’d better be. We have more company.”
When I looked over my shoulder, two more zombies stood in the doorway. They didn’t wait for an invitation and ambled in.
“I’m calm now,” I said, not looking at Alex. “I’ll take the one on the right.”
“Let’s do this,” she said.
And that’s how it went for the next three hours. Zombies would trickle up the stairwell, drawn in either by the sounds of all our zombie killing or by open invitations from Alex or me. Let me just say, that wasn’t the highlight of my life. There’s nothing more refreshing than being splattered with zombie guts from head to toe. And then there’s the smell. It just made you know you were alive.
We could have kept going, but the fatigue factor set in and Alex was concerned that there was really no margin for error. A slip in zombie guts or a miss hit and you could put yourself in serious danger.
We decided to close down the shop of our little zombie killing operation for the day. As Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day. I only hoped that the first floor didn’t fill in with new ones to replace the ones we had just killed. That would really suck.
Fortunately, we were blessed with zero workplace accidents. I sort of wondered if we might get a promotion for that. Maybe win an office in the C-suite.
“What the hell are we going to do with all these freaking bodies?” Alex asked as she wiped some dark red zombie goo off her pants.
Surveying the scene, I saw dozens of zombie bodies lying about in various states of brokenness. Most had thinner or misshapened heads from blows from my baseball bat or Alex’s rebar pole.
“They’re going to stink the hell out of the place,” she said.
“That was one of the advantages to killing them outside,” I said. “You let them lay where you played ‘em.”
“Well, mister-happy go-lucky, we are not outside.”
I pondered what we should do for a few seconds. “We can’t throw them down the stairs. That could block the way for any we want to lure up here. But wouldn’t it be fun to watch them try to climb over the mound of the dead?”
“Professor, you’re not coming up with any answers here,” Alex said, giving me the stink-eye.
“Our only play is to drag them back into the offices.”
“Shit,” she said as her shoulders slumped.
“We can always call in support,” I said as I held up the walkie-talkie.
She brightened a little and said, “Make it so.”
So, I called in the reinforcements. Richard and Brother Ed responded immediately and said they were on the way.
“Want to get a head start and get a few bodies moved?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“Don’t be a pussy.”
The rules of the schoolyard were still in effect, so peer pressure worked. It was my turn to sigh as I trudged toward the closest body. The decision to grab it by its feet or its arms was an easy one. I knew I did not want to look at any pulped heads, so I went for the feet.
“I think we thinned them out some,” I said as I tugged a body across the floor.
“It all depends on how many new ones come in,” Alex said as she grabbed a leg of a dead zombie and started pulling it across the floor, falling in beside me.
“I’d say we have another day or two of this and we might be able to get down onto the first floor,” I said, my voice strained from pulling a two-hundred-pound body of dead weight across a carpet. Alex also struggled with her undead bag of flesh and bones, yanking it along the floor with some effort. I made it halfway to the closest door and stopped. “You know, man invented the wheel a long time ago. We should get a dolly or something.”
Alex pulled to a stop and looked at me with wide-eyes and said, “That’s why you make the big bucks. There’s one of those industrial-sized laundry baskets on wheels up on four. We can probably get two to three bodies in it, and that beats the shit out of dragging them across the floor.”
I brought my fist up to my mouth with my knuckles facing toward my mouth and blew on them
. “That is, indeed, why I’m CEO material.”
She barely waited for me to finish my sentence before she was on the move for the back stairwell. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she disappeared around a corner, leaving me alone with a sea of dead bodies.
Let me tell you, being in a room with that many bodies by yourself can really creep you out. My imagination went into overdrive as I imagined that they would rise up at any second and start toward me. That was impossible, but so were zombies and look where that little notion got us.
My macabre thoughts were unceremoniously interrupted by the sound of gunshots coming from the other side of the floor, causing me to jerk my attention in that direction.
What the hell?
My only thought was that someone or somebody had opened the door on Brother Ed and Richard again. My rifle was over by the door, so I rushed to get it as I fervently prayed we didn’t have a repeat of last time.
I pulled up the walkie-talkie, pressed the talk button, and yelled into it. “Brother Ed, Richard, what’s going on?”
More shots came from the north side of the floor. I snapped up my rifle as I waited for a response. I pulled up the walkie-talkie again to talk, but Richard’s voice blared out from the tiny speaker.
“There’s someone in here with us.”
“Is it a who or a what?” I asked.
“A who,” Richard said, his voice softer and calmer. “I’m sure I shot the son of a bitch, but it’s dark in here, so who knows.”
“Where’s Brother Ed?” I asked.
“He’s with me,” Richard said. “But whoever it was, attacked him.”
“Where’s this guy now?” I asked.
“Gone,” Richard said. “At least, I think he is.”
A door at the back of the building burst open and Alex rushed in, her pistol up and ready to rumble.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Not sure,” I said. “Someone attacked Brother Ed.”
“Who was it?”
“Stop asking questions I don’t have answers to,” I said.
Books of the Dead (Book 8): The Living Dead Girl Page 11