Guy raised both hands. “Hey, show a little respect, huh?”
Emin jammed the finger into her lock. “Tommy, how am I supposed to do this?”
“Take your time. Feel at the lock. You should notice a pin and tumbler. It looks something like this.”
Tommy drew a rudimentary image of the lock in the dirt. He motioned how the pin and tumbler should be moved so the lock would click open. Emin attempted to do as Tommy suggested. She shook her head. It didn’t come naturally, especially when your ability to feel was so severely hampered as theirs.
“Don’t worry,” Tommy said. “We’ve got time.”
“And not much else,” Guy added helpfully.
Emin leaned over the lock that pinned her ankles down. “Wait. I think I feel it. . .”
Something snapped. The finger bone lay in two pieces in the palm of her hand.
“I cannot believe you did that,” Guy said, crestfallen.
“It’s okay. Give me another one.”
Guy twisted away from her as far as he could get and kicked at her with his foot.
Emin changed target. “A toe will do just as well.”
The two watchmen turned in their direction.
“Guys,” Tommy hissed. “You’re making too much noise.”
Emin and Guy turned in their guards’ direction. The older man tossed his cigarette and stamped it into the ground and left. The two younger guards headed over.
* * *
“They’re coming,” Tommy said.
Emin leaned on her hands, trying to look nonchalant. That was the problem with trying to look like you were doing nothing. It never worked. “Evening, boys,” she said.
By the grimaces on the guards’ faces, you’d have thought she’d spat on their flapjacks. All they needed to do was check their locks and they’d spoil the party. Tommy leaned against the door of his cage. It might look like he was pressing his weight against it, but in reality, he was helping hold it shut. And if the boys were on the verge of discovering the lock had been released. . . Well, Tommy could slip from the cage and be on them in a matter of seconds.
But it would take seconds, and without a distraction to aid him, he could easily succumb to the weapons they carried at their hips. The best course of action was to convince them to let them go.
“You boys don’t want to do this,” Tommy said. “The last thing you want is a bunch of innocent deaths on your hands. Let us go and I swear, you’ll never see us again.”
“That’s not our decision to make.”
Tommy looked from one lad to the other. “The military won’t see it that way. Look at us. We’re wearing uniforms. When the military finds out what you did to us, they’re going to rain down harder on your town than the zombies ever could. You can stop that from happening. Right here and now.”
The younger lad jerked his neck toward his buddy. If it had only been him, Tommy might succeed. A smile spread across the older lad’s face like a wound.
“When the zombies came, they ripped our parents to pieces,” he said, that smile fixed in place. “Do you think I care about what happens to a bunch of lowlifes who let the zombies in?”
“The zombies breaching your defenses were because of a lot of things, but not us.” A skunk shat in Tommy’s mouth. The lie tasted as good as it smelt. “We did try to warn you. We told you what would happen if you didn’t leave. It’s not our fault you wouldn’t listen.”
The lad sneered. It put Tommy in mind of a bull terrier. “I’m afraid I’m not going to listen to you now either. You’ve reached the end of the road. We’ve got you and we’re not letting you go. You’re going to pay the price for what you’ve done. Come morning, you’ll each be dangling from a rope. We’ll string you up so everyone can see what happens to those who turn against us.”
Tommy shook his head. Was this really what he was out there fighting for? “Keep this up and pretty soon you won’t have a town left to defend.”
The man leaned in close. “We’ll be the only town left to defend. We survived the first wave, we’ll survive the second, and however many more they throw at us. We’ll never back down. Do you hear me? We’ll never give in.”
The boy’s eyes were wide and wild, focused on something only he could see. Tommy realized with dawning horror that the boy’s mind was cracked. He teetered on the edge and stood to take the entire town with him.
But not us. Not today.
The boy had wandered so close Tommy could smell him. He was truly sorry for what was about to happen. It wasn’t like he had much choice. “So be it.”
* * *
Tommy’s cage door swung open. The padlock cracked the boy across the mouth. The cage turned as Tommy vacated it. It swung back and struck the boy in the face again.
Tommy swept the legs out from under him and loped forward with his long legs. The younger lad backed away, arms rising to block any attack. But there was no attack. Tommy grabbed the boy and hurled him amongst the Death Squad.
Guy held the first lad tight. His cheek was cut open and blood spilled down his face. The younger lad tripped on Emin’s trapped legs. She fell upon him, wrapping him up in her arms.
“Now, I’m going to ask you some questions and I want them answered,” Tommy said.
“W-What are you going t-to d-do to us?” the older lad said.
Trapped the way he was, the best grip Guy could muster was a handful of the boy’s hair. The craziness was still there in the boy’s eyes, but it had dimmed to barely a glimmer.
Tommy turned to the boy. “That, my lad, is entirely up to you.”
27.
SAM
ooooOOOoooo. . . ooooOOOoooo. . .
Sam started, head heavy and groggy with sleep. The light above the door flashed blood red in the slow, drawn-out breaths of a dying man. She tossed her blankets aside and slipped on her paper-thin foot coverings. She gauged her exhaustion and sensed it was the middle of the night. She reached under her pillow for her makeshift weapon and slipped it into the palm of her hand.
What was going on? Had the other researchers attempted their escape? Had they been caught? Or had Greg once again been the captured escape artist?
Heavy boots thumped down the hallway outside in measured strides, growing louder with each passing second. The footfalls thudded loudly, rebounding off the narrow walls. An entire regiment might have been marching by.
Sam turned sideways and tucked the weapon behind her back. Tension gripped Sam’s temples and squeezed so hard black smudges flashed in front of her eyes. Her knuckles whitened around the weapon. She felt the vibrations travel up her legs, building into a threatening crescendo. The heartbeat slowed but did not diminish, descending back down as they headed away.
The bunched-up muscles in Sam’s shoulders relaxed but she maintained her vigilance. She stepped up to the wall and rapped on it with her knuckles. The braying alarm made tap code almost impossible. Sam took to tapping out a single word between each jarring pulse of vibrations.
“What. Is. Going. On?”
Felix responded. “I. Do. Not. Know. . . An. Escape?”
“I. Think. So. . . Has. This. Happened. Before?”
“No. This. Is. New.”
A shout somewhere down the corridor, a voice Sam didn’t recognize. Then two voices bellowed in response, voices used to being obeyed. Someone was mounting an escape.
And I’m still trapped in this damn room. Greg, where are you—?
The light above the door blinked green and slid open. A man’s broad shoulders filled the narrow space.
Sam took a step back. If people attempted to escape, guards might be more prone to react harshly.
The man stepped into the pulsing light, illuminating his standard-issue prisoner uniform and swollen face. Greg.
* * *
Sam’s heart soared. She rushed forward and embraced him. She pulled back. “It’s about time.”
Greg led her toward the door. “The escape’s happening now. The guards caught some of the
escapees already. I don’t know how long we have. If we want to make a move, we should do it now.”
He poked his head out of the door and eyed each direction.
Sam skidded to a halt. “Wait. We have to take someone with us.”
Greg’s eyes were alert on the pulsing lights. “We don’t have time for this. We can’t rescue everyone.”
Sam jogged to a door. “We’re not rescuing everyone. We’re rescuing one guy. His name’s Felix. His cell is the one beside mine. He’s been here for years. He’s the one with information about the Architect. He’s the one who can tell us what we need to know.”
“I thought you were going to ask him?”
“I did. But he might know more, things he’s not aware of.”
“Fine. But just this one guy.”
Sam grinned in thanks. “I knew you were cool.”
Greg flashed his makeshift key card across the panel. “Let’s see how cool I am when I’m dangling at the end of a rope.”
The light bleeped—inaudible over the blaring alarm—and the door shunted to one side. Samantha stepped inside.
She’d often wondered what Felix looked like. She pictured an old thin man with fierce intelligence in his watery eyes. A man who wore his skin well. She wasn’t even sure he would come with them, but she had to try.
The grin faded from her lips. He was nothing like she imagined. In fact, he was nothing at all.
* * *
The room bore no bed, no cheap slippers, none of the items to which Sam had grown accustomed. Instead, a single table sat pressed up against the wall that adjoined her cell. A computer system perched upon it, with a single black electrical cord running along the floor, up the wall, and into a small hole in the ceiling.
Sam drifted toward it as if trapped in a tractor beam. She pressed her fingers against the hard wooden tabletop. “This. . . This. . . What is this?”
Greg spread his hands. He had no idea.
Sam balled her hand into a fist and tapped on the wall. A simple message. “Hi.”
The letters appeared on the screen. “Hi.” A slight pause before words flashed up on the screen. There was no keyboard here. If they were coming from anywhere, they had to have been created at the other end of the black cable. A sentence popped up on the screen. Do you know anything about the escape?
A ball of wood bumped against the wall, mimicking the sound of someone rapping on it with their knuckles.
Sam identified the words as they were spat out one after another. “Do you know anything about the escape?”
Sam’s legs felt weak and almost crumpled beneath her. “I. . . I don’t understand. . . Where’s Felix?”
Greg took a step toward her. “Sam, we need to go.”
Her legs were trapped in cement and she no longer had access to her brain. Something was wrong, very wrong.
Greg grabbed her by the arm and dragged her outside. He built into a run, taking her down random hallways. The yawning distance between them and Felix’s room did Sam some good. She regained control of her body and as Greg wrenched her left down another endless hallway, Sam resisted.
“Not that way,” she said. “We need to head south.”
“Why?”
Her mouth formed the words but she did not utter them. Because Felix said so. She had no idea who Felix was—if indeed there was a Felix at all. Perhaps the whole thing had been an experiment. But one thing she did know—whoever put her in this situation, whoever was manipulating her, could never be trusted.
“Not south,” she decided. “North.”
Greg waved his hands. “Hang on. One minute it’s south, now it’s north? That’s where our lab is. You’re saying the Architect lived just around the corner from where we were working?”
Now that Greg said it out loud, it made perfect sense to her. “Where’s the cruelest place for salvation to reside? On the other side of the compound, or somewhere so close we could taste it?”
Greg made a popping sound with his lips, unconvinced.
Sam changed tack. “Do you trust the people working here?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“Felix said the Architect’s room is located in the south or southwest.”
That caught his attention. “So, we should be heading north or north-east.”
“That’s my thinking. Look, we’re going to be running around at random in here otherwise. Better we use their lies against them, don’t you think?”
That won him over.
The alarm blared from giant speakers spread at regular intervals down each hall, the lights vacillating between blinding bright and bleak darkness.
“No no no no no. Let me go! Let me go!”
A pair of guards burst onto the scene, each man struggling with a man bleeding from the face. His fingers scraped the smooth floor and latched onto blind corners. The guards planted their feet and tugged at him hard.
Sam and Greg skidded to a halt and dived around a corner, pressing their backs to the wall.
The escapee clenched his face. “You don’t understand! I have to get home to my family! I have to get out of here!”
The guards said nothing as they tore the man’s grip loose and dragged him kicking and screaming.
Greg checked the coast was clear. “We have to hurry. The escape’s already falling apart.”
They mounted another crossroad and hopped over the streak of blood from the reticent prisoner. Doors stretched in either direction, so many to get lost in.
How are we supposed to find the Architect’s room?
“Hey. Hey you.”
They turned. A guard stood in the middle of the hallway.
Greg’s eyes bulged. “Run.”
* * *
They took off down an identical corridor. The guard’s heavy footfalls trailed after them. “Stop! Stop right there!”
They turned a corner, and another in an attempt to shake him. Their recent incarceration and lack of exercise weighed heavily on their escape. They turned a third corner.
Greg waved his arms and came to a stop. “I can’t. Go on without me.”
Sam grabbed his arm and pulled. “Don’t be stupid. Come on!”
He shrugged her off. “I can’t. I’m done. I knew my smoking would catch up to me eventually.”
The guard’s footsteps thudded louder, not slowing down an inch. He would be on them in seconds.
Greg took his makeshift key card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Go. I’m slowing you down. Find the Architect’s room. Get inside, find his key, and get to the elevator. Get to the surface and tell everyone what’s happening down here.”
Sam put a hand to his cheek. Waves of sadness washed over her, threatening to unseat her. She handed him her makeshift weapon. Greg shook his head, refusing it, but Sam pushed it back at him.
“Take it,” she said.
Realizing he couldn’t refuse, Greg nodded his head. “Thank you. And hey. If you get to the surface, say hi to my kids for me.”
His grin faded into murderous rage as the guard thundered around the corner. Greg roared as he sprung to his feet, using every molecule of oxygen he had left. He knocked the younger man to the ground and rolled on top of him.
Sam backed away. The lights smothered every surface blood-red as they faded up.
The guard reached for the Taser in his pocket. Greg twisted the guard’s arm. The first shot struck the wall and bounced off.
Sam leaped back, turned, and ran. The bellows of anger and snarls of agony that nipped at her heels down those hallways were the stuff of nightmares.
Greg had sacrificed his freedom for her. Now, she was on her own.
* * *
Sam took another two corners before she took stock of her situation, pressing her back to another empty hall. She panted, breath rasping and pearls of sweat rolling down her cheeks. She put a hand to her head as if that would stop the screaming and the guilt that lashed at her in a torrential downpour.
She looked at the corridor s
he now found herself in. It looked identical to the others. She thought the Architect’s rooms would look different somehow. An armed guard perhaps, or several regular rooms knocked through into one. She was a rat in a maze and had no idea where the cheese at the end was.
“No! No no no no no!”
Another escapee. His voice was hollow and distant, carried by the bare walls like it enjoyed hearing the screams and the cries. Sam listened carefully but couldn’t figure out which direction the victim was coming from. The volume exploded as two burly guards backed around the corner dragging the former researcher behind them.
Sam backpedaled and peeked around the corner as the guards manhandled the prisoner. She didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until they were gone.
She scratched the back of her head, sensing something prodding her there. She checked her fingertips. No blood or angry bug so far as she could tell. It was only when she turned her head that she noticed him standing there.
A guard was staring directly at her.
* * *
“It’s okay, you don’t need to run.”
“Sure, I don’t!” Sam reached for the band of her pants. Her weapon was gone. It’s not gone. You gave it away.
The guard held up his hands as he edged toward her. She recognized his sloped forehead, his long nose, and stubbled chin. It wasn’t a face she was particularly happy to see again.
She turned to run.
Cauliflower spoke fast, sensing her sudden shift in weight. “I know who you are—who you really are. Jason told me all about you.”
“Jason? Who’s Jason?”
The look he gave her was one of deep sadness. The identical look he wore the day he’d dropped her off at the lab for the first time and seen his old buddy’s undead form. His buddy, Jason.
Sam stayed fast, leaning on her back leg to thrust herself forward if the necessity arose. “You knew he was trying to help me? Then why were you a shit to me?”
Cauliflower paused in his forward momentum and grinned. “Lots of people have called me a shit, but never after only a single meeting.”
Sam edged toward the next corridor. “I guess I’m quicker on the uptake.”
“I guess you are.”
Death Squad (Book 3): Zombie Nation Page 16