We moved carefully, attempting to keep our shoes from scuffing on the floor, or our footsteps landing hard enough to echo down the open hallway. In the dark, it was difficult.
I started to think I could see shadows in front of me. The dark silhouette of a desk. A human sitting behind it. A door beyond the desk outlined with pale light… not my imagination. “There’s light beyond that door,” I warned softly.
“Zero.” The loud voice made us all jump. Apparently my view of a person at the desk hadn’t been my imagination either.
Once I had my breathing under control, I snapped. “Brent. You knew?”
He turned on a battery-operated lantern, bathing the outer reception area in a soft light. Now I could clearly see the door behind the desk, although the light beyond it was no longer visible.
Brent’s smug smile and nod made me want to punch him in his perfect teeth. “To be fair, I didn’t realize immediately. Your idea was a good one. I didn’t notice you in the hive mind. What made me more suspicious was the timing. Several of those zombies are pretty new. The likelihood of them turning on each other was low.”
“And you already knew when we were aiming to get here,” I added.
Rex and Caleb had dropped to a crouch before Brent turned on his light. He wouldn’t have seen them, and I gave no sign to indicate they were there. “You knew we wouldn’t leave children to be turned into monsters,” I continued. “But you would, wouldn’t you?”
The boys crept around the desk. Rex shot a look at me, and I nodded, making it look like a response to my own question. “You would. You, a person they turned into their own personal slave, are willing to let little kids turn into zombies. To let them die. To order the creatures inside in order to do it.”
“Slave?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “Bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “Dramatic? Maybe. Accurate? I believe so. You’re still a kid yourself. Do you really think of this as normal behavior?”
Brent had the same look of surprise on his face as when I’d informed him of his immunity to the creatures. I decided to push hard against his loyalty. “They experimented on you. They turned you into a machine to control their own monsters. They lied to you about your connection to them. You are letting them fool you.”
My accusations against them had him reluctantly nodding. At my final accusation, the one I blamed him for, he frowned.
I raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Yeah. I blame them for a lot. Your own choices, especially now that I’ve told you the truth, I blame you.”
Seemed fair to me. From the look on Brent’s face, I doubted he felt the same. He stood and took a couple steps around the desk. His eyes were glued to me, so he didn’t notice the boys until Caleb grabbed his leg and Rex tackled him to the ground.
Chapter Forty-Four:
Mike
We all froze at the thump of his body, and the loud oomph he let out when he hit the floor. Anyone else nearby would likely have heard. Zero didn’t let us sit around long before she motioned for Shanti to grab some tape from the desk and use it to restrain Brent to the chair. He glared, but didn’t make a sound.
I frowned at his silence. He needed help, so why not call out to his guard buddies? Unless he figured they would not help him for some reason. Maybe Zero’s exposure of a lie they’d told him had caused a little trouble in paradise. Or maybe he was stubborn enough to believe he could save himself. Would he do what Zero did and use the zombies to protect him?
“Zero, stay alert,” I warned softly.
She nodded, but the look on her face told me she already realized the potential risk. “Nothing coming yet. I don’t feel any creatures in the building other than the few we already ran into. But we need to move. If he knew we were here, others probably do too.”
At that, Brent grinned ruefully. “They do,” he admitted. “But your distraction kinda… well, distracted them. Believe me or don’t, but there are only two guards by your people.”
He shook his head and gave Zero a pleading look. “You’re right, you know. I don’t want to hurt kids. But they will, so you need to get them out of here.”
Talk about a change of heart. If his words were true, breaking the prisoners out would be much easier than we’d anticipated.
“What about the doctors?” Kate asked. “Where are they?”
He shrugged. “Around. Not by the prisoners. They aren’t fighters. That’s what the guards are for. They just do the experiments.”
Rex ripped off another strip of tape. “Not that we don’t trust you,”—he said as he stuck the tape over Brent’s mouth—“but we really don’t.”
Brent gave a slight eyebrow raise, but nodded. It would have been easy for him to get help. Whether human or otherwise. That he hadn’t tried made me suspect he was at least being truthful about wanting to help the kids.
“You could always come with us,” Zero offered softly. “You don’t need to stay here.”
Something like regret seemed to flash through his eyes, but he shook his head. Zero nodded ruefully. “Yeah. Didn’t think so. See you around, Brent.”
Kate turned off the lantern, then followed as Zero moved away from Brent and toward the prison area. The door was, oddly, not locked.
Her offer for Brent to join the group wasn’t without precedent. She’d at least met him and knew a bit about him before extending the invitation. For me, it had been almost a whim. We met, she found out I was alone, and offered to let me join them. I liked to think she was able to tell enough about me in that short time to know I wouldn’t betray them. But what about Brent? He’d already proven to be on the other side. What did she see in him that made her offer? Fear? Regret? Desire for a family? All of the above applied to me. Did she see it in him too?
Moot point, I suppose. He didn’t accept. Which I hoped wouldn’t come back to bite us. Rex and Caleb stayed back to keep an eye on Brent while the rest of us moved to deal with whatever we found on the other side of the door.
As Zero slipped through, the door squeaked. A soft sound, but it seemed to echo through the quiet building like a fire alarm. She froze, and I felt like my lungs had become paralyzed. We’d made it this far. Would we make it the rest of the way?
“Brent? Boy? That you?” a male voice called from a little further into the room. “Turn on that lantern, would ya?”
Zero used the man’s voice as cover as she slipped into the room. At least, that’s what I assumed when I heard a loud thump followed by her voice. “Hey, bring the lantern in here. He was alone.”
“Ninja girl,” Shanti said with a grin. “Nice.”
“Z?” a girl’s voice called from the dark. “Z, is that you?”
I grinned. The young voice belonged to the person Zero would have been most worried about.
“Prati! You’re okay?” Zero called out. Her voice wobbled a little. When she spoke again, she sounded more in control. “Everyone there?”
“Most of us, yeah,” Prati answered. “They put the adults somewhere else.”
Kate came in with the lantern, and we verified that no other guards were nearby. Considering how loud we’d become and the fact there was no response, I wasn’t too shocked.
“Kane, you in there too?” Zero asked. She tried to use the lantern to peek through the small window on the locked door.
From my angle, all I could see were the vaguest hint of shadowy forms. One pushed his way through the others to answer. “Here, boss. What do you need?”
“Got your picks?” she asked, a sly smile crossing her face.
Kane gave a matching grin and produced the small kit with a flourish. “Always, boss. You remember what I taught you?”
She scoffed and snatched the kit from him when he slid it under the door. “We’ll just have to see.”
It wasn’t as quick as in the movies, but within a few minutes she had the door unlocked.
Prati was the first out, and she grasped Zero in a fierce hug. Kane followed, a grin on his face. “Nic
ely done, Z. Glad you’re a good student.”
Kristy came out, a frown marring her gentle face. “Did you find Caleb? They separated him from us, and I don’t know what happened.”
“They sent him to find us. He’s keeping watch in the hall right now. They didn’t hurt him,” Zero assured her.
Our leader did a head count, and smiled. “Glad to see all of you. But we do need to keep it down. Anyone know where Scout and the rest of the adults are?”
Tony and Quinn exchanged a look. “Scout’s here? We haven’t seen him,” Tony answered. “The others are in another room further down this hall. At least I think so.”
“We have to move,” Kate said softly. “What are the zombies doing, Zero?”
She took a step back and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she shook her head. “Still attacking everything that moves. The guards will be busy for a while yet.”
Zero stepped forward and motioned everyone to follow. “Kate, you’ll have to confirm the people we find,” I heard her whisper. “I don’t remember all of them, and I don’t want someone who doesn’t belong tagging along.”
“Got it, don’t worry, kid. We’ll get everyone out,” the woman answered.
What about Scout though? The other kids hadn’t seen him. Didn’t even seem to know he had been taken.
One step at a time. Step one: find our adult friends. Step two: figure out if they knew anything about Scout. Step three: if Scout was brought here, rescue him. If he wasn’t here, we would have to track him down somehow. I doubted Zero would accept him as a loss. He was part of her group. One of those she took responsibility for. While she was more attached to the kids and Jake, the girl I knew would never abandon someone she added into her family.
A few doors down, we found another locked door. There was no noise to prove whether anyone was there. But the kids had been silent as well. Unnaturally so, as if they had been threatened into silence.
“Guards in there?” I asked softly.
Zero shrugged. “If we can believe Brent, it should only be one. Hard to say for sure though.”
She handed the lock picks to Kane and stood to the side, her sword out and ready. Her dark eyes glinted in the dim light from the lantern we’d left down the hall. In the darkness, she looked like a warrior.
A split second later, I realized she was one. Ever since the outbreak began, she’d had to live like a warrior. Fighting to survive. To protect. To end the threat to those she loved.
Kane’s lock picking skills surpassed Zero’s. In under a minute he was through. The room was pitch black. A fact I wondered about since they clearly had flashlights and lanterns for the possibility of a power outage.
A bad feeling hit me, and I grabbed Zero before she could go in. We spun to the side to get behind the door. Just as I pulled her down to the floor, I heard the sharp crack of gunfire.
Chapter Forty-Five
Zero
Lucky for Mike, I have good reflexes. I’d been ready with my sword. If I hadn’t been able to get the tip down, I would have ended up stabbing him in the chest. As it was, I couldn’t be sure he didn’t end up with a cut on his arm for his trouble.
Not that I blamed him in any way. His reflexive action had likely saved my life. With bullets flying over our heads, it was lucky no one else had been hit either. At least not yet. The shooter was clearly unwilling to risk us getting away with our friends.
“Anyone have a shot?” I called out. A peek around the door had me ducking as another round struck near my head. Mike remained hunched over me, trying to protect me. Sweet, but not necessary.
We didn’t have many weapons, but I knew Rex still had his handgun. I honestly hadn’t kept track of what we had available weapons-wise. We’d been flustered and off balance since Ground Zero, so it was difficult to remember who was where, let alone what supplies we’d managed to hang onto.
I heard the familiar sound of Rex’s gun discharging, and smiled. If he’d shot, that had to mean he had visual on the guard. Or at least was able to follow the trajectory back to get an idea of where he was in the room.
My smile faded. “Careful! We don’t know where our people are!”
“Got it, Z,” Rex responded. “I can see him.”
A quick look up showed me he was right. Someone had rolled the lantern into the room, and Rex quickly used the light to his advantage.
“You’re outnumbered,” Rex yelled. “Stop shooting, or we’ll do whatever we have to do.”
The guard snorted. “Right. Like I’m worried about a couple ‘a kids.”
“You are, or you wouldn’t be shooting to begin with,” I argued, giving my friends time to get a better look into the room. “Please. We just want our friends back. We honestly don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Mike grabbed at my arm to stop me as I slowly sat up, but I waved him off. “Like you said, we’re a bunch of kids. Why would you want to hurt us?”
I could almost hear him thinking. “We were told you were dangerous. That you needed to be stopped.”
Kate had a frown on her face, and she glanced at me before speaking. “Stephan, is that you? Did you know they took Scout? They’re threatening him now. Your best friend. The man who has saved your life countless times since the outbreak.”
He lowered his gun. “Scout’s a prisoner? Here? I haven’t seen him. Not since he took off with you and the rest of his unit.”
“That’s the thing, Stephan. We don’t know for sure that he’s here. Just that he was captured at Ground Zero a few weeks ago. We came here to rescue the children your boss abducted, and the rest of my unit. We were hoping they brought Scout here too.”
He grunted, but slid his gun back into the holster. “Better collect your unit then. They were slated to go to the horde tomorrow. Didn’t want anything to do with that, but if I had objected, they would have made me join them.”
We stood, realizing the danger had passed for the moment. “Where are they?”
“Through that door,” he waved to a metal door just beyond the desk where he’d been sitting. “I don’t have a key. They only stationed me here when the horde went out of control.”
“Kane?” I nodded toward the door, and the older boy went to work on it.
The heavier lock apparently required a bit more work, because he worked on it for a few minutes before a loud clanking sound indicated he was successful. “Got it.”
“Jose? Charlie? Ryan? You guys in there?” Kate called into the dark cell.
“Katie? That you?” a tired female voice answered. “Gotta come get us out. We’re kinda stuck at the moment.”
Kane and I followed, while Mike and Rex kept an eye on Stephan. The rest remained in the hall to watch for any trouble.
Kate ran up to the woman who had answered her. “Charlie! So glad you’re okay. We’ll have you guys out of those chains soon. Jose, Ryan, glad to see you guys.
The three smiled tiredly. “You too, Kate. Scout out there with you?”
The smile on Kate’s face withered away. “No. But we’ll find him too.”
As they talked, Kane worked to unlock the chains connecting them to the wall. They were able to move a little, but not enough to reach each other, or get anywhere near the door.
A warning buzz filled my mind. “Guys? We gotta speed up. We have to get out of here before the rest of the guards manage to regroup, or the zombies get in.” I urged.
The creatures weren’t going to stay out much longer. They would push by the guards and find us stuck at the end of the hall. At that point, it would only be a matter of time before they broke through the doors.
Unless I could regain control of the horde. With everyone together, I could probably do it. And with Mike to help direct me, I shouldn’t have as high a risk of losing control of myself.
Whichever of our enemies managed to get through, we still needed to move. Preferably before any of them did. I watched the door impatiently while Kane finished freeing the other three.
&
nbsp; “We need to find Scout,” Kate said.
I stalked back to where we had Brent. Ripping the tape off his face, I asked, “Where is Scout? He was with us at Ground Zero and got caught. So where was he taken?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what happened. Only that some traitor was caught while kidnapping Alex and Ali.”
“Kidnapping?” I narrowed my eyes. “Not even. We rescued them from you people.”
Brent chuckled. “Yeah. Some rescue. Take them from a place where they were protected from the creatures and bad people who would hurt them. Now they’re at risk, same as the rest of us.”
“Other than our immunity to the zombies, and our ability to make our own choices.” Alex shoved his way forward, allowing Brent to see him. “They didn’t treat us like guests. We were their prisoners.”
“Whatever you say, man,” Brent said, shaking his head. “Anyway, from the chatter here, your friend escaped. Now go, before I decide to stop you.”
I rested my sword on his neck. “You could try.” I turned to the others. “Go. Straight down this hall, I’ll be right behind you.”
They walked quickly down the hall, and I saw the guard… Stephan, following. I raised an eyebrow at the addition, but accepted Kate’s judgment about her friend. Besides, we could use all the help we could get.
Rex and Caleb stayed behind. “We’re going to help you with him first,” Rex gestured toward Brent, answering my unspoken question. “Can’t leave him out here.”
I’d considered it. I thought he would probably be okay. However, with the creatures in such a frenzy, he may not be able to gain control if they managed to get inside. A feat they somehow still hadn’t accomplished. I might have underestimated the guards’ ability to protect their space.
Anyway, it wasn’t as if I wanted to leave him to die. Just unable to follow us. “We’ll lock him up,” I decided. The cells would at least keep him safe if the zombies were the ones who managed to break through. And the guards could easily let him out if they gained the upper hand on the horde.
Countdown to Zero (Patient Zero Book 2) Page 23