“Okay,” Tom said. “Watch my six.”
He opened the door and pushed it slowly until it stopped against the wall.
“Is this guy armed?” Sam asked.
Liam remained quiet.
“I forget,” Tom said, “but let’s assume he is.”
“Roger that,” Sam said.
The three of them entered the dining hall. A few round, wooden tables stood on a laminate floor. A plate with half-eaten molded meatloaf, likely microwaved left-overs by the looks of the baked-on, burned-in grease, sat on one of the tables and a few chairs were pushed in neatly. The sink at the end of the small room was empty and there were no indications of a disturbance. No blood splatter or any remains were in this room. Liam was relieved by this.
Tom gestured toward an open doorway, through which they could see the front half of an oven—a kitchen was through there.
“I’ll take it,” Sam said, and he moved across the room and into the kitchen.
Tom then gestured toward what appeared to be a small closet. He pointed toward Liam, then held two fingers to his eyes.
Cover me.
Liam raised his rifle in a ready position while Tom walked softly toward the closet. He closed his hand around the doorknob, turned it, and pulled the door open in one swift motion. Liam moved fast and trained his rifle at the opening, looking right and then left inside the small storage area.
Although he was certain there was no danger in there, Liam acted hyper-alert and even a bit scared. He knew there was nobody holed up and waiting to ambush the team, but he didn’t want to give away any indication of his secret, so he played along lest he drop his guard and risk any suspicion from either Sam or Tom.
“Clear,” Liam said.
Sam McKenzie appeared from the kitchen.
“Clear in here, too. Can’t fit more than two people in there.”
“All right,” Tom said. He nodded behind him. “The actual research part is in the next room. It’s also pretty small, so we should be able to clear it and head into the museum.”
“Let’s do it,” Sam said.
They moved out of the dining hall and into the weather lab.
The weather lab was outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment. A massive bank of computers, satellite radar screens, and high-definition monitors showed current, past, and forecast temperatures; wind speeds, wind direction, air pressure, and humidity. Other screens showed multiple versions of the same map of the area, each one highlighted by a variety of colored lines, shifting patterns, and topography.
It was also very small and offered little room for hiding.
“There’s nobody in here,” Tom said.
Sam didn’t seem to disagree.
“Seems like a waste of effort,” Liam said.
Sam snapped and grabbed Liam by the shirt. “You shut your mouth, you little fuck!”
Liam winced and expected a hard fist to his face when Tom stepped in and jammed an arm between the two men.
Tom held Sam’s eyes firmly.
“Now as much as I don’t care to take this guy’s side,” Tom began, “it doesn’t make sense to lose the resource. I’m sure Chief doesn’t care to lose any more men on this mission, either. So if you can stomach the sight of him for a little bit longer, I would appreciate it.”
Sam held Liam’s shirt by the buttons. His gaze shifted several times between Tom and Liam before he finally let go.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get this over with. I’ll take point.”
Sam moved between the two men before Tom could object. After he passed, Tom glared at Liam—an optical warning of sorts. Liam’s visage could only form a reaction that seemed to ask, “What did I say?”
Without a word or any additional posturing, Tom fell in behind Sam and Liam followed.
Chapter 39
Shelly and Grace shared discreet, nervous looks as the minutes ticked by. They were unable to have an open discussion since Robert was there, but Shelly had no doubt Grace was thinking the same as she: when would they finally get their opportunity to run? How was Liam going to ensure their safety with Ryan’s father all but threatening him with death? Would Liam somehow send them a signal? Shelly could only try to emphasize patience through subtle facial expressions and gestures. For the moment, it seemed to appease Grace, but for how long, Shelly wasn’t sure. Their moment would come, though: of this Shelly was certain. Then she would have to rely on their combined cunning and strategy; speed would not be on their side with Grace’s injury.
Robert’s role through all of this was to remain the man in charge. Someone had to stay behind and monitor each team’s progress via the radio. He was a general, assembling his soldiers for battle and putting them in the best position to be successful. To Shelly’s surprise, James had gone in with the others instead of staying behind.
Robert scratched rapidly at his pant leg and his jaw muscles tensed. His eyes moved quickly from location to location. A few times he raised the radio to his mouth, but then reconsidered, and he lowered it to his side. He was nervous.
Sensing an opportunity to get inside his mind, Shelly asked, “What do you think’s happening?”
Robert’s head snapped over, a look of annoyance in his eyes as he nodded toward Grace.
“Really?” he asked. “In front of her?”
He took several steps to the side and Shelly followed.
“Sorry,” she lied. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal to talk around her. It’s not like she’ll be around much longer.”
He sighed. “Whatever. It’s fine.”
“So what are you thinking? And I hope you don’t mind my saying… but you look nervous about something.”
“What?” he barked, but then he backed off quickly and his voice softened. “I don’t know. I guess. A little, maybe.”
“What is it?” Shelly asked. “Are you worried about this guy?”
Robert laughed. “Seriously? No. I am not worried about whoever we’re going to find up here. He’s as good as dead.”
The last part sounded forced, as if he didn’t truly believe in the mission.
“Then what is it?” Shelly insisted.
He stared straight ahead and Shelly could see him juggling a number of possible answers, trying to find the most sufficient. Eventually he gave up.
“It’s nothing.”
“I’ve known you a long time, Robert. It’s not nothing.”
His face turned pale, like he was genuinely troubled. He showed the signs of a man filled with anxiety.
“What do you want me to say, Shel?” His voice trembled, as if he was about to cry.
Shelly was taken aback. This was no longer the son of a career Marine, entrusted by his father to lead a group of men to do what most people would consider heinous and unconscionable. Robert had changed over the last forty-eight hours. He seemed broken. He seemed… reachable.
“I want you to say what’s bothering you, Robert. Maybe you can start by telling me why we’re up here.”
He shot her wild look. “Are you kidding? You know why we’re up here.”
“You know that’s now that I’m asking,” she said.
He shook his head quickly. “Shel… I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, Robert! It’s not that hard! You knew yesterday we shouldn’t be here, I could tell!”
He looked past Shelly and toward Grace, probably to see if she could hear their conversation but the woman’s attention was elsewhere, perhaps lost in thought.
“Who cares if she can hear us?” Shelly said. “In fact, this has everything to do with her. With her survival.”
At the word ‘survival,’ Robert regarded Shelly in stunned disbelief.
“Survival? Wait… what the--”
“Oh, come on Robert,” she asserted.
“Shelly, we can’t talk about this.”
“Why not?”
“Because. It’s too late.”
“That’s the thing!” Shelly was nearly shouting now. “It�
�s not too late! We can leave right now! We’ll drive the vans. We can be off the mountain in fifteen minutes. It’ll take the rest of them half a day to get back! They’ll never catch up to us!”
“Okay,” Robert said. “Then what?”
Shelly didn’t have an answer.
“Hm?” he insisted. “What happens after that? We just go home? It’s not like we can run far.”
“We don’t have to figure that out right now. We can worry about that later.”
He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
“We worry about that later,” she repeated. “For now all we need to do is the right thing.”
His eyes fell to the radio in his shaking hand and Shelly pressed him.
“What’s the right thing, Robert?”
He brought the radio to his mouth and looked into her eyes.
“Tell me, Robert… you know.”
He pushed the Talk button and opened his mouth:
“Alpha team, report status.”
There was a pause before a voice came through the radio’s speaker.
“Nothing yet, sir. One more location to go.”
Robert made the same call to the Bravo and Charlie teams. Both reported no signs of the man in hiding.
Robert turned to Shelly again.
“It’s too late,” he said.
Chapter 40
James stood at the top of the stairs on the second floor of the cafeteria. The dead lay strewn all over in sticky, crimson patches. Some of the bodies remained intact, some were in pieces. Based on the amount of blood, however, it seemed as though there should have been more bodies. Perhaps some of them had gotten up and walked away after they died.
Standing against the railing next to James, Kyle’s jaw hung open and his mind went numb.
“Does this bother you?” James asked.
“No, sir,” he lied.
In fact it bothered him a lot, and more than he expected. After all, Kyle was supposed to be a badass like Tom. He hadn’t been blessed with the same bodybuilder-like genes as Tom had, but mentally he was just as tough, or so he thought. The run-in with the girl who had come down the mountain, the one they captured and whose husband they were now hunting, bothered him more than he cared to admit. The way she destroyed that zombie with unbridled fury had… disturbed him.
He had originally been perfectly fine with this undertaking. He treated it as though it were his civic duty to protect the secret, much like a serviceman serves his country. He no longer felt this way, though, and only recently began to question the elders’ motives.
“Are you sure?” James asked. “You can wait outside with the girls if you want.”
James said it dismissively, as if what they were doing was ‘men’s work,’ and outside was where the girls should wait because they aren’t equipped, mentally or physically, to handle this kind of horror, and maybe that’s where Kyle should wait, too. Kyle found this to be ironic since James’ son, Robert, the person he left in charge of this operation, was outside waiting, essentially, with the girls.
“Yes, sir,” Kyle said. His voice came out gritty as he tried to maintain a level manner of speaking, lest his voice come out shaky. “I’m okay.”
James stepped closer to the diminutive Kyle and he backed up instinctively. The corner of the railing bumped into his spine and he couldn’t back up any further. James bore down on him and the railing started to dig into his skin. He grimaced as he tried to hold his position.
“Let’s get something straight,” James said. His voice was cold and dark. “This is a search and recovery mission. Got it?”
Kyle nodded quickly.
“Good. So we search out this person and we find him. Whatever happens to him or the woman after that won’t be your concern. Got that?”
Kyle nodded again and said nothing.
“Very good. Because you will be counted on to help us”—James grinned from the corner of his mouth—“recover this person. And should you fail to carry out your mission, there will be consequences.”
Kyle swallowed hard and tried to angle the point of the railing into the muscular part of his back.
“I understand, sir,” he grunted. Then as an afterthought, he said, “Leave no trace, right?”
James straightened and backed off finally, and Kyle stepped away from the railing.
“Good,” James said, his tone having returned to normal. Then he winked at Kyle. “Glad I can count on you, son.”
Then James walked away.
Kyle rubbed his back and walked in the opposite direction. Whether it was by his own paranoia, or James had actually spoken the words under his breath, Kyle swore he heard the former Marine say, “There won’t be any trace of you left after this trip anyway, kid.”
Chapter 41
Tom, Sam, and Liam separated inside the museum, which allowed Liam to move through it with relative ease. There were no zombies inside and he knew Grace’s husband wasn’t ‘hiding’ in there, so he took advantage of the opportunity for a mental rest. He stopped occasionally to read some historical facts posted on large, hanging boards with photographs of the mountain. At one point his mind drifted away from the current task and he unconsciously lowered his weapon. It was Sam who caught him taking a break.
“Hey, asshole!” he hissed. “Ready your weapon!”
Liam flinched; he turned and saw Sam staring at him and he raised his weapon, not high enough to aim it at anyone, but just enough to try to prove he was still taking his role seriously.
Unfortunately, it had not been enough to convince Ryan’s father. Sam marched toward Liam, his feet loud and ominous along the floor. He let go of his rifle with one hand and reached for Liam’s throat.
“You little, fuck! Killing my son wasn’t good enough? You’re trying to get us all killed?”
Liam tried to back away but Sam caught him and squeezed his fingers tight around Liam’s airway. He could barely breathe, nevermind respond. He heard other footsteps race up from behind and Tom’s voice sounded tinny as the blood pressure changed in his ears.
“Mr. MacKenzie, no!”
Tom had already slung his rifle over his shoulder and he used both hands to break Sam’s grip. Sam let go stubbornly, his fingernails raking against Liam’s neck. The skin immediately felt hot and raw and he leaned against a wall while he fought to catch his breath. Sam was still shouting blame and other obscenities as Liam inhaled and exhaled deeply.
“You fuck!” Sam cursed. “It should be my son here with me, not you!”
Tom held the man back as he continued to yell and tears drew wet lines on his face.
“I never should have let him go with you! I knew you couldn’t be trusted!”
Liam said nothing as the man carried on.
“You’re the reason my son is dead! It should have been you!”
Liam stared at the angry man and withstood his tirade. He absorbed the man’s hate and his vitriol, let it consume him just as his own rage had consumed him after the dead man bit his friend.
The rage began to burn. It started as a slow roll until it boiled inside. Liam’s teeth grinded and his jaw hurt. Part of him wished Tom would let the man go so Liam could retaliate, physically, against everything Sam had said and done up to now, but that wasn’t going to solve anything. Sam’s rants hadn’t been personal; they were the outbursts of a grieving father.
Still, Liam would no longer remain quiet, and he channeled his rage into a few simple words that came out with a growl.
“I did not kill your son!”
The words scraped the inside of his esophagus and shot from his mouth like a missile. Both Tom and Sam appeared shaken by the sheer and unexpected power of Liam’s voice.
“I am no murderer!”
Stunned or confused by Liam’s sudden ability to defend himself, Sam stopped struggling against Tom, and Tom let go of the man.
“He was my best friend!” Liam cried, and as the word friend crossed his lips, he felt overcome with emotion. His sight no
w blurred with tears it became difficult to speak, but he needed them to hear him.
“And I let him down!” he shouted through sobs. “We were supposed to protect each other!” He ran his forearm across his eyes so he could see, but his shoulders fell forward as the sadness started to overtake him. “But I couldn’t protect him from Roy!” Then his voice softened: “And I will always regret it.”
Sam said nothing. His weapon hung at his side and he didn’t advance on the young man. He only stared back at Liam as if this was what he’d been waiting to hear ever since he received the news of his son’s death.
Liam finally raised his head and looked at Sam. Both men’s eyes were filled with tears. Liam was surprised to see Sam’s visage had also softened. His brow no longer creased, but rather arched with sympathy. Seeing this gave Liam the strength to tell Sam what he’d been hoping to tell him since they were in the store.
“Ryan did not die a monster, Mr. MacKenzie.”
Sam nodded, as if acknowledging a silver lining.
Liam then approached the older man. He reached out a hand and placed it on the man’s shoulder.
“You raised a good man, sir. And he died a good man. Not a monster… not a zombie.” And from the deepest part of his heart, he said, “And I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do more.”
Sam nodded once more and Liam let his arm drop to his side. The older man offered no apology for his actions over the last twenty-four hours, but Liam didn’t need one. The man had been devastated. He’d lost his only son, his only child. And while Liam held himself responsible for Ryan’s death, it seemed that Sam finally recognized that Liam hadn’t deserved to be treated so unfairly. Perhaps now the yelling and the threats were over, and the two of them could finally mourn Ryan peacefully, each in his own way.
A burst of static came over the radio. Then a voice. Peter’s voice.
“Sir, this is Bravo Team, over.”
It was the team in store.
“Go ahead, Bravo Team, over.”
Liam recognized the second voice as that of Robert’s.
“We’ve got movement in the stockroom. It’s faint, but there’s definitely somebody in there. Want us to check it out? Over.”
Dead Summit: Containment Page 19