by Kim Cleary
"It's breakfast time. Best meal of the day. With a bit of luck, those two guards were the only ones on duty in this part of the compound."
I crossed my fingers. We needed every bit of luck we could grab.
A huge Red Cross decorated the swinging doors at the main entrance to the hospital building. Glynn brought us to a small, unmarked and locked door at the back of the building, where one of his keys fit. Glynn sidled through and paced quietly down the narrow corridor to a group of offices at the other side of the building.
He rattled the door handle of the office labeled Dr. Prescott. It was locked, and none of the keys fit. Glynn stepped back and kicked at the lock until the wood splintered and the door pushed open.
Glynn opened the doctor’s filing drawers and indicated for me to do the same. "Ed told me we found the special undead accidentally."
"The living dead."
Glynn nodded once. "They tested various drugs on twitchers, but found them unreliable, so Asher ordered the known twitcher hangouts destroyed. Ed led a squad sent to clean up a group. They chased them into the underground railway and got lost in the tunnels. They didn't find the addicts, but they did find some living dead who showed them the way out. When they reported this back to Asher, he sent more patrols to find them."
"Nice way to say thanks."
Glynn shrugged. "All they found were more twitchers, alive and undead. The last few raids ended up in MIAs. That’s when they called me back."
I joined Glynn at the cabinets. "I think the twitcher undead who escaped military capture joined Owen’s group." Glynn didn’t need to know about the decaying man who tried to kill me at Echo Den. We worked better together when he wasn’t wasting time worrying about me. "What are we looking for?"
"Anything that tells us what Prescott and Asher are doing."
"What authority do you have to rifle through my files?" A tall slim man in a white lab coat flung himself through the doorway.
Glynn leveled his gun at the man's head. "I'm running out of patience. Save me some time, and you a bunch of agro, and tell me what you are doing."
"It's all in the reports I write for the Colonel." Dr. Prescott pushed thick black glasses against his nose. "He was most insistent, the reports are for his eyes only."
Glynn clicked a stubby cylinder around the end of his weapon. "Try again."
The doctor stared at Glynn's name badge. "Major Buckley, I'm sure we can discuss this reasonably."
"Where is the lab where you do your work?" I stepped in front of the doctor.
"I will not speak to an uncivil private who is out of her place." He snapped at me.
Glynn yanked me away from the man. "I don't have time for reading reports. Give me a short summary."
"It's early days." The doctor's Adam's apple bobbed in his reddening neck. "The only undead we've captured so far have been in a poor state and have not survived testing. But I'm hopeful. The Colonel is a brave man for trying to discover what's keeping the dead alive. We've lost so much medical knowledge." He lifted his hand as if in supplication to Glynn. "You know yourself, we are barely able to keep our men alive on the battlefield, let alone get them back here for effective treatment. The Colonel wants to find ways to keep our soldiers safe."
"What can you learn from the undead, except how to be undead." I snapped back at the doctor. A light bulb went off in my head. "You're trying to work out how to raise dead soldiers aren't you? Raise them as sentient living dead to keep your army replenished?"
A muscle in Dr. Prescott's face twitched. "You must be the young necromancer Asher mentioned to me earlier today. These experiments must be of great interest to you. Right up your alley, so to speak."
"Is that it?" Glynn spat out the words.
I thrust him aside. "The point is" —I stabbed my finger into the doctor's chest— "you can't raise the dead without their permission. You most certainly cannot raise the dead and then use them for your own ends."
He smirked at me. "Do you really think you can stop us? Once the right people find out, funding will flow, and we will achieve our goals."
"I will stop it." A hard knot fused in my belly. If Glynn didn't shoot this smirking sadist, I'd thrust a lance of pure anger into his cold heart.
"I take it the right people have not yet been fully informed." Glynn sounded businesslike.
The doctor paled, mumbled a few words and shook his head.
"So, I only have to kill you and the colonel to keep this foul notion quiet."
His pale skin turned gray under Glynn's steady stare.
Glynn found some duct tape in a drawer. He taped the doctor's arms behind his back, pushed him into the seat behind the desk, and taped him to the chair.
"I want to check the lab." I said another silent prayer that Bill made it to safety, but I couldn't leave without checking.
Glynn taped the doctor's mouth. "God only knows what to do with him."
We strode along the corridor, turned left at a T-junction, and paced to large double doors at its end. Glynn pushed his way through three sets of doors, each one a tighter fit than the last.
"What does he test in here?" I asked.
"As far as I knew, he's working on patches and survival rations. Looks like he dabbled in a bit more than that."
After the third doors, we entered a huge, dark, windowless room. Glynn flicked the light switches on the wall, and yellow light gleamed off a polished cement floor and stainless steel tables.
"It looks like an operating room, doesn't it?" I trailed a fingertip along a spotlessly clean stainless steel table.
A low groan sounded from the far corner. I thrust a wheeled table aside to dart across the room.
"Meagan, not so fast."
I slowed to a fast walk, but kept moving. A single large man lay on a metal table against the wall. Please, not Bill. I ran to the table, Glynn close at my heels.
Bill. I sagged against the table, the metal hard against my hips. Bill tried to lift his head but couldn't. His eyes rolled back in his head.
I gripped his hand. "What happened? What did they do to you? Tell me how I can help?"
"Poison." Bill slurred his words. "Too late for me. Save the others."
I curled my arms around his shoulders, his head lolled, and he died in my arms.
Tears sprang to my eyes, I scrubbed them away, leaned into Glynn’s chest. "I will kill the bastard myself if you don't."
Glynn squeezed my shoulder. "I'm not going to let you kill anyone."
"You wouldn't care if I killed a dead person."
"You wouldn't be killing them, if they are already dead. Isn't he just going to rise again seeing as his head is still attached? "
"Owen and his people are different. Healing Owen felt like healing you or Del. They’re like us, with a second chance at living. I don't think Bill will live again after this."
Glynn's face hardened. He turned an unseeing gaze across the room.
"I know you've got history with Owen. But—"
A screech startled both of us.
Glynn pushed me back against the wall. "Stay there."
With raised gun, he paced to the source of the sound. The double doors swung open with a swoosh. A man, little more than skin and bone, dressed in a tattered T-shirt and ripped jeans, staggered toward us.
Chapter 24
The skeletal man lifted one of the smaller tables and flung it at Glynn. Instinctively I dropped to my knees and slid under the table holding Bill. Glynn fired, but he missed. The bullet hit a table and pinged against the opposite wall.
The man screeched again and staggered behind a steel cabinet. He kept up a constant babble of incoherent sounds. I pushed out with my senses and recoiled back. He felt like the half-crazed living dead who’d tried to kill me at Echo Den. A twitcher, so Owen said. My stomach heaved as the suffocating intertwined odors of dirt, death and decay slammed into my memory.
I slid across the nearest metal table. Pushed in front of Glynn. "He's a dead twitcher. He's even more messed up now
than before he died."
Glynn fired into the man's chest. The sound of the dull explosion bounced between steel surfaces and the dead twitcher crumpled to the floor.
"Fire. We have to make sure he doesn't rise again as something less than human." I ran to the metal cabinets along the wall. "It's a lab. Must be alcohol somewhere."
Glynn grabbed my hand and tugged. "We have to get out of here before breakfast is finished and the compound fills up with soldiers looking for something to do."
"Help me. Look for alcohol. And a lab lighter."
He grumbled, but rummaged in the cabinets I hadn't yet searched. We found what we needed. I drenched the corpse in alcohol and set it alight, then tossed more alcohol around the room.
"What are you doing?" Glynn snatched the empty bottle from me.
"Destroying this place."
"It won't burn easily. You'd need to drop a bomb on it. Besides, it's not the place that’s wicked. Asher isn't trying to accomplish evil goals. I probably wouldn't have given these experiments a second thought before—"
"Before you met me?"
"We need the healing patches replenished, too many medical improvements to list." He held out his palms. "There's got to be a way to do both, without harming anyone." He swallowed hard as if including the living dead in the category of anyone was distasteful.
The flames licked the ceiling, but they found nothing to burn and quickly descended to the body.
Glynn grabbed my hand and pulled me to a side door. "You promised to take me to Owen. Let's go."
I pulled back. "Let's hide Bill. Just in case."
"Where? It's hardly safe for him here, is it?"
"There must be somewhere."
Glynn lifted Bill's body over his shoulders. "Old storeroom, on the way to the garage. Follow me. Remember to stay close and low."
We ran along the fence to another set of squat buildings. Glynn deposited Bill's body in the first building, and motioned me to get down and stay quiet.
We crept into the garage. Four jeeps lined one wall. Two soldiers worked on the engine of a fifth vehicle.
"Stay here. Stay quiet." Glynn tiptoed between the jeeps, at the work desk he grabbed a wrench.
He smashed the wrench on one man’s head, and punched the other on the chin. Both men wobbled for a few seconds and fell to the ground, barely conscious.
Shaking his hand, Glynn strode to one of the cars, opened the passenger door for me and slid into the driver seat. "Back to the tunnels, right?"
"I don't know any other way to get to the base, other than the one Del and I took."
"It will be quicker in the jeep. And safer now the sun is rising." He reversed out of the garage, played with various controls in front of him and drove the car around the back of the garage, away from the manned main exit.
"You hurt your hand."
"It'll be okay, might sting for a bit."
"I guess those soldiers weren't your people either."
He shook his head as we arrived at a small, unlocked gate in the fence. I jumped from the car, opened the gate, and closed it after Glynn drove through.
Instead of the small lanes I traipsed along with Bill, Glynn turned into a major road and we headed back to the city. How long did we have before someone raised the alarm? Would Asher guess our moves and send a patrol after us? If he did, he probably wouldn't include any of the people Glynn trusted. The odds stacked up against us, but what else could we do?
At the station plaza, Glynn screeched to a stop. We clambered out of the jeep together. I tugged on Glynn's hand and dragged him to the top of the steps.
At the railing, he pulled me back to him. "Be careful. You don't know what's down there."
"They've all gone." I yanked his hand again. No need to tell him about the few who remained. The small group led by Simon and hoping to die in a final battle with Asher’s raiding party.
"What about dead twitchers? Have you considered them?" He pushed ahead of me. His gun drawn and ready.
Dead twitchers. Living dead twitchers. Children trying to survive among the filth and garbage. I jolted to a stop. "They may not all be lost. Owen might be able to help them, especially the children. He is a steadying influence."
Glynn shook his head. "Not now. Focus on the next step. Let's get this done." He jumped down another two steps.
"I know you're mad at Owen—"
"I'm not mad at him. He did what he had to do."
"Why did Asher think—"
"His judgment has been off since I got here. Since well before according to Ed."
I trailed after Glynn. Each step descending further into darkness. At the landing, I almost fell over him. He crouched, silent, listening. He pushed me behind him. Shuffling steps sounded from below us.
"If it's a living dead, let me deal with them," I whispered.
"I'm not stopping to ask questions."
"Meagan?" My name wafted up from below, in a soft voice I recognized.
"Simon?" I let out a small groan. "It's okay. I'm with Glynn."
Glynn sighed. "Corporal Simon Woods?"
"Yes, sir." Heavy footsteps plodded up the steps. Simon's white face loomed below us.
"What happened?" I moved to step closer, but Glynn blocked my path.
Simon shrugged. "It didn't work. I haven't got a scratch on me."
"The others?"
"Gone, as far as I can tell."
"Are you kidding me? Ed reported your death." Glynn fixed a hard stare on Simon's face.
"Yes, sir. But something went wrong. This isn't for me, so properly dead is the aim."
"You can help us." I stood. "We have to go to Echo Den."
Silence dragged on for seconds. Simon shuffled his feet. "Nothing's changed. I hate this. You said you'd help me."
"I will, if it's what you want. Will you help us find Echo Den first? It’s important."
"The cart is still at Westmead Station." Simon sagged against the railing, but when he spoke he sounded strong again. "It's out of charge, but we can pump it back—it's mostly downhill. Where's Bill?"
"He was caught. He died." My throat thickened. If I could go back in time and change what happened, I'd have done it in a heartbeat. I hardly knew him, but he seemed like a decent guy. Another one lost to Owen and his people.
Glynn rifled through his vest pockets and pulled out a small torch. "I doubt it will shine for long, but it's better than nothing."
Simon led us to the cart Del and I sat in not yet a day and a half ago. Glynn took the opposite side of the cart to Simon and together, grunting, they worked the pump to push us ahead. On the downward stretch to Echo Den, we gathered speed until we bounced into the bay at the entrance to the cavern. We all clambered from the cart and Glynn swung the torchlight in a slow arc across the space. A few bits of paper blew across the floor in a slow draft. Empty packing crates lined one wall. Most of the furniture gone.
"How do you propose we find them?" Glynn said.
"The town is on the train line." I walked along the wall feeling for light switches. "With a bit of luck, whatever they used to power their lights, something is left."
"The track ends here." Glynn shone the torch along the wall.
"Loops and levels wind below us and through the other side. Yes." I flicked switches and a gentle light broke through the darkness. I pointed to the opposite wall. "I didn't see them leave, but I'm sure I can find it."
Simon nodded. "I know the other exit, I helped them load some stuff.
"Lead on," Glynn said.
"Not so fast. I need to ask Owen first." I stepped to the metal table they’d left behind in the middle of the cavern. Probably been too heavy to lift, or too securely attached to the ground.
Glynn swore under his breath. "You promised."
"It's not my secret to share. But I did promise, and I will ask him."
Glynn glanced at his watch. "Do your voodoo stuff, tell him I'm here, but I won't wait all day."
I opened my mouth to tell Glyn
n how little I appreciated his sarcasm, but stopped before I spoke. Arguing with Glynn wouldn’t achieve anything. "I don't do voodoo." Not that I knew of at least. I'd send feelers down the ley line. "I should be able to reach Liliwen as she's a spirit, and she'll ask him for me. I know she will."
"Why not Owen directly?"
"He's a living dead, not a spirit. It should be easier for me to reach Liliwen." Truthfully, I had no idea if I could reach Owen, or any other living dead. They didn't come to me like spirits did. I sensed their essence, but couldn't reach out to them.
Glynn rotated his hand in a small circle. His silent way of saying get on with it.
I found the ley line. Its energy ran in a direct line under Brimbank to Saltpetre Way in one direction, and Winterhurst in the other. If I pulsed out a jolt of my own energy, amplified by the ley, I could wake every spirit in each direction. With lips pressed together so hard it hurt, I hesitated. Another risk. We didn't have much time, and if I could get Glynn to trust Owen, he'd put an end to this vicious war against the living dead. I gripped the smooth metal of the central table, closed my eyes and called for Liliwen.
The power bubbled and swirled like a pot of seething soup. Nothing happened at first. No danger of waking up hundreds of spirits, I couldn't even contact one. I tried again, called Liliwen's name out loud. Holding on took all my strength; she was too far away. I slumped over the table, the metal hard against my cheek.
A breath of cool air drifted across the back of my neck. Evie. The sound of her voice strengthened my resolve. Her light touch reminded me why this was important. I called Liliwen again and reassured Evie I was well, told her not to worry. Even so far from Ravenswood, Evie's laughter rippled across my skin.
Liliwen came to me in an image, her face creased into a question. A proper conversation wouldn't be possible. Her spirit didn't form in front of me like it did when I called spirits with the help of wormwood smoke. I projected my request for Owen and Glynn to meet and sort out a sustainable future. Her eyes opened wide, her disapproval smacked at me, but she nodded her agreement to ask Owen.
"What's happening?" Glynn pressed against my back, his warm breath curled around my ears.