There were two large levers with black rubber knobs at the top and a smaller one to their right. On the floor were three foot pedals. I took them to be the accelerator, the brake, and something else. What that something else did, I had no idea. What was worse was the dashboard. There were enough dials and monitors to put a jet airliner to shame.
That wasn’t my biggest concern, though. I was certain that as soon as I started the damn thing, I’d drive it into the lobby of the building and bring the whole thing down on my head.
First things first, though. I had to start it up. Just what I did to make that happen, I had to figure it out in the seconds I had before Alex came out and shot me. I scanned the dashboard and found a key sticking out of a raised slot.
Well, bless my soul. They left the key in it. In a flash, I had my hand on it and turned it to the right.
What followed that was a resounding nothing. No engine cranked up. No hum of electronics. Not even a click.
The only thing I could do was try it again. Of course, I was rewarded with the same result. A big fat nothing.
When I raised my head from the dashboard, I had a clear view back into the building. What I saw did not warm my heart. Alex, Richard, and Brother Ed stood inside. Each one of them glared at me. Even Brother Ed, breaking from his normal sullenness, shot me a hot stare. Alex had her arms crossed and was even tapping her foot on the floor impatiently.
I caught some motion out of the corner of my eye and saw a lone zombie shambling up the roadway about a half a block away. He had spotted me and was on a beeline in my direction. Something had damaged one of his legs, giving him a terrible limp. So, he moved just a little bit faster than molasses. Still, if you fell into a vat of molasses, you could die, so I couldn’t just ignore him.
Since I wasn’t going anywhere fast, I decided my best course of action would be to exit the bulldozer and get back inside.
Eyeing the deader, I slowly opened the door and stepped out onto the treads. Once he saw me out in the open, the zombie sped up, seeming a little bit excited. I stepped along the treads, heading toward the front of the dozer while looking down at the ground for a landing spot. My undead friend was making better progress than I thought, so I was forced to make a hasty leap. Big mistake.
No sooner did my feet hit the ground than they also discovered a patch of glare ice hidden under the thin layer of snow. Before I knew it, I was on my back, looking up at the slate-gray sky, wondering what the hell had just happened. The collision with the unforgiving concrete had also stunned my senses, leaving me somewhat incapacitated.
A lonely snowflake drifted down toward my face. My unfocused eyes did their best to follow its descent as if it were the most important thing in the world.
Voices shouted from some far-off land. They seemed to be alarmed by something, but to me, they seemed unimportant as I stared up into the sky, watching my favorite little snowflake gently fall toward me.
It was about ten feet above me when a shriveled face appeared in my view. There wasn’t one thing attractive about this face. The tip of its nose was blackened, probably from frostbite. One of the ears dangled down, hanging like an over-large earring. Frozen blood hung off its chin. Its teeth were an absolute mess, with several missing and some broken off. There was no doubt that this guy needed to see a dentist, and soon.
I’m not sure if he was reading my mind or not, but he snarled as if he didn’t like it. That’s when he opened that ugly maw and began to bring it downward at an alarming rate.
He was about a foot from my face when something came out of nowhere and violently smashed the thing away.
A new face appeared in my view, and it was one I remembered, but the name eluded me. She had very short hair and rosy red cheeks. She did not look happy as she leaned in over me.
“Get up, asshole,” she said.
Someone passed behind her. It was someone else I thought I knew. Anyway, he had a piece of metal pipe in his hand. He lifted it over his head and swung it downward. When he brought it back into my view, blood dripped off the end of the pipe.
“We can’t stay here,” the woman said.
“But the snow is pretty,” I said.
She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. When she opened her eyes, she said. “He got his bell rung when his head hit the ground.”
Another familiar face came into view. It was a man with a gaunt face and deep-set eyes. “Joel, you are one big idget. That bulldozer had been out here for a year or more. Of course, the dangburn battery is dead in it. You weren’t going nowhere.”
I wondered what this man was talking about.
A voice came from out of view. “We have two more incoming.”
The woman said, “He’s out of it. Help me get him up.”
Together with the man, they got me to my feet, but the move made me feel a little woozy. Much to my surprise, I discovered I had been lying next to a bulldozer. Imagine that?
I tried to stand under my own power, but my legs were not cooperating, and I started to collapse.
The nice woman lifted my arm and moved in close to me, holding me up.
“Help me get him inside,” she said.
The gaunt-faced man did not look like he wanted to help at first but finally complied, slipping in next to me.
I said, “You know, you guys are really nice.”
“You know, the less you say, the better,” the woman said.
They ushered me inside and let me take a few moments to collect myself. That’s when I regained enough of my senses to know that I had just really fucked up.
Chapter 13
Delay of Game
It took nearly two days for me to get over that concussion. It wasn’t my first, and I’d place money that it would not be my last. It was a pure wonder that I had a brain cell left in my head. But I finally felt like my head was no longer in a blender.
That’s when Thor slammed his hammer against the door to my room. The pain was exquisite, resounding in my head like the world’s largest bass drum being pounded on.
Despite the pain, I slowly lifted my head off my pillow, holding my hands pressed against my ears, hoping to keep my brain from spilling out of them.
Thor went to work on the door again.
“Oh, for the love of all that is holy,” I whined, “please stop.”
Alex slammed the door open, where it crashed against the wall, causing another wave of pain to roll through my head.
“Hey, loser,” Alex said in an overloud voice. “Is your brain still scrambled like an egg?”
I put up my hand in a gesture of surrender and said with my eyes squeezed shut, “Please, take it down a notch or two.”
She didn’t. To her credit, she didn’t yell, but it was close to it. “Sure, can do, good buddy.”
I winced at each word she said.
“Why are you here?” I asked. “Is it just to torture me?”
“Well, that was my first reason, but Doctor M is on the line with Richter. I thought you’d want to know. Richter is really jonesing to get his hands on the Doc’s vaccine. Some kind of big breakthrough.”
Despite the pain, I opened both of my eyes.
“I thought that would get your attention,” she said.
“And they’re talking right now?” I asked, pushing myself off the bed and onto my feet.
“Yep.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“That’s more like the Joel I know and love,” she said with a shit-eating grin.
“Get out of the way.”
“Now, you’re in a hurry,” she said as she opened the door and stepped out into the hall.
The sun streamed in through the windows of the lab and felt like ice picks being stabbed into my eyes, but I pressed on into the room. Call me courageous. I thought maybe they might give me a medal, but no one seemed to notice.
“I hear you, Doctor Richter,” Doctor M said, puffing out his chest. I could tell he was on his high horse. “But you have said in the past that you thought my
vaccine wasn't the direction you wanted to go in?”
Richter sighed audibly on the other end of the line, then said, “Please, Doctor...Metha...Doctor M. We have been over this. Yes, I may have been...peremptory when I discarded considering the value of your vaccine, but as I said in our last call, new revelations in our research have come to light.”
“And?” Doctor M asked, and it was easy to tell that he enjoyed making Richter admit that his research was, indeed, necessary.
“From what you shared earlier and as I said in our last call, my colleague, Doctor Jenkins, is absolutely certain your vaccine could be very beneficial in moving forward with our project.”
“What about the data we sent you before?” Lori asked. “Can’t you use that to...to advance your work?”
“Well, while the foundation is solid, it is incomplete,” Richter replied.
“We sent you all we had,” Doctor M said.
“But it was before you…” Richter said, searching for a word, “...perfected it.”
“Doctor Richter, what we sent you was very close to our final product,” Lori said.
There was a long pause on the other end of the satellite phone. Then Richter said, “While it is close, we have run your data, but there seems to be some key information missing. Is there any way you can extract the data from your systems?”“I’m sorry, but when our computers were destroyed, we lost all our data,” Lori said.
“But didn’t you back it up?” Richter asked, almost whining.
Richard said, “It’s not like we have a team of IT security nerds here.”
We had someone, but he was no longer on the team. His name was Sean, but he had been killed in the attack by Colonel Kilgore. Sean had been a super nerd and had set up the solar panels on the roof and maintained Doctor M’s computers and research equipment.
Alex sat forward in her chair and asked, “But isn’t all this talking just bringing us back to where we left this discussion the last time? We have no way to get the vaccine to you that doesn’t get us killed.”
“Certainly, there has to be some way,” Doctor Richter said and thought I detected a slight whine in his tone. “We have had some promising progress, but…”
“But what?” Alex said.
Richter cleared his throat and said, “Well, we have had some progress, but the subjects aren’t producing the results we desire.”
“Are you testing on real, live subjects?” Richard asked.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, then Richter said, “Please be assured we are only testing on infected subjects.”
Doctor M leaned in toward the satellite phone and asked, “What are your results?”
“Not as promising as we would have liked,” Richter said with real disappointment in his tone. “That’s why we need your vaccine. Doctor Jenkins is almost positive it is the missing key.”
“Well, why don’t you just send someone up for it?” Alex asked.
“Uh,” Richter stammered out, “I’m sorry, we just don’t have the personnel for that.”
“And there we are, just like before,” Alex said. “How many times do we have to go over the same ground? We are the ones that will be risking our asses, not you.” She shook her head back and forth at the end of her sentence.
It was my turn to jump in. “Doctor Richter, this is Joel. We have made a test run to get out of the hospital.”
Richard snorted out a laugh and said, “And that went just great.”
“But we didn’t die, did we?” I said.
Richard said, “That’s a low bar to measure success. Not dying. If you know what I mean?”
“But we didn’t die, and that’s the bottom line, right?” I asked.
“That’s ridiculous,” Richard said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t danger and lots of it. There are still a lot of zombies in our way.”
I held a finger up in the air and said, “Zombies, that we made it past.”
“But the bulldozer was as dead as a doornail,” Alex said.
Doctor Richter’s voice sounded from the tiny speaker on the satellite phone, “Wait. What does this bulldozer have to do with anything?”
His interruption surprised me. I had almost forgotten he was even on the phone, which was the point of us convening around the table.
“Sorry, Doctor Richter,” Doctor M broke in. “There is some crazy plan to get Joel to the river, and it somehow involves a bulldozer somehow.”
“So, you are going to bring us the vaccine?” Richter asked.
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“That is YOUR plan,” Richard said. “And you don’t even know how to get that bulldozer started.”
Brother Ed, who had become almost invisible in his silence, said, “It probably just needs a new battery.”
All heads turned toward him.
“Yeah, back before I became a preacher, I worked a little construction,” Brother Ed replied. “I drove a dozer a couple of times. If you put a new battery in that one out there, it’ll probably start right up.”
Richard seized on this and asked, “Now, where in the hell are we going to get a battery?”
Despite being surprised by Brother Ed’s revelation, I was one step ahead of Richard’s question. “I know where we’ll get one.”
Alex tilted her head a little and gave me a sideways glance. “And just where is that?”
“Where are we storing all that power from the solar panels on the roof?” I asked.
Richard was now on the same level with me. “But we need those batteries to keep this place powered.”
“Oh, I bet we can spare one,” I said.
Brother Ed came to my rescue. “Yep. From what I could see, Sean designed the solar system with lots of...redundancy. You won’t miss one battery.”
“How the hell do you know?” Richard asked.
“Because I worked with my dang hands,” Brother Ed replied, holding up his hands. “You learn a thing or two when you work construction.”
Brother Ed never ceased to amaze me, and he saved my ass at that moment.
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Richard said, crossing his arms across his chest.
Richter decided to uncloak again. “So, does that mean you’re bringing the vaccine to me?”
There was a moment of silence, and I jumped on it with both feet. “We are.”
I could almost feel Richter smile across the satellite phone, but Alex threw cold water on the moment. “That is if we don’t get our asses killed first.”
“Well, yes, certainly, I don’t wish any harm to befall any of you,” Richter said. “But I’m glad that you are going to endeavor to get the vaccine to me…and my colleagues.”
Alex again stepped in, “Please know this is just a plan. If we run into any real danger, I will pull the plug on this whole shit show, and that’s it.”
Once again, Richter cleared his throat and said, “Well, I expect nothing less. I certainly don’t want any of you to take any unnecessary risks.”
Somehow, there was something underneath his words that seemed to say that he didn’t care whether we lived or died as long as he got his greedy little fingers on Doctor M’s vaccine. But I wasn’t much better. If Richter gave me any chance to bring Kara back from the brink of death, I’d crawl across a hundred miles of broken glass.
Chapter 14
Intruder Alert
“Where are they?” I asked as we stood at the windows that overlooked the courtyard five floors below. Because the windows faced the west and what Richard was talking about was to the south, we all had to press our faces against the glass to get any sort of view. It also meant that our faces were contorted from the pressure of pushing our face against the window, giving them a flattened look.
“I’m telling you that I saw something,” Richard said insistently.
“And I’m saying all you saw was a deader,” Alex said.
“Do deaders carry lights?” Richard challenged.
The
sky was filled with slate gray clouds, casting a gloomy veil over the area. Dusk was an hour away, but thick clouds cloaked the complex in darkness, making nightfall seem imminent.
“It was just a reflection of the sun off the windows,” Alex said.
“No, it was not!” Richard growled. “I’m telling you, I saw a damned light. Maybe two. They were in the main building on the first floor.”
“What direction were they headed?” I asked.
“East,” Richard said.
“Don’t believe him,” Alex said. “We haven’t seen anyone else here in months.”
“But we made it here,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean anyone else would,” Alex said. “You had supernatural help...guidance.”
“I’m glad you finally admit that,” I said.
“Don’t let it go to your head, vision boy,” Alex said.
By then, our breath had steamed the windows up so much, none of us could see jack shit.
“We gotta head to the east side of the building,” I said as I pushed off the window and spun to head out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Alex asked.
“Just where I said I was,” I replied as I rushed out the door and into the hallway.
The echo of footfalls sounded behind me, making me assume Richard and Alex were following me. I made them play catch-up because I wasn’t slowing down as I surged down the hall.
Doctor M stuck his head out of his lab door and asked, “What is all the commotion?”
“There are people in the main hospital building,” I said as I buzzed by him, but added, “Maybe.”Alex’s voice sounded from behind me. “I think he’s full of shit, Doc.”
Richard followed her up and said, “There’s someone down there. I know it.”
I’m not sure what I hoped. If people were roaming down on the ground, it could just as well be a rampaging horde of marauders. That thought caused me to slow just a little. At least, I could check it out. They could be a threat.
But in my heart of hearts, I had this deep down hope that it might be my friends from the Manor. They knew where I was headed when I started my God-given mission to save the world. Maybe they had finally freed themselves of the threat of the rogue soldiers and had caught up to us.
Books of the Dead | Book 9 | Dead of Winter Page 6