That meant that, if Germain didn’t kill all the survivors of the base when he’d taken over, they were being kept elsewhere. I could only hope that Manuel and Big Ben were among those people.
A short, blading guy wearing glasses came up to our group. “Germain wants to see you,” he said in clipped tones, his eyes barely flicking over to me and Jude.
I glanced up at Jude. A muscle ticked in his jaw but otherwise said nothing.
“When can we see Germain?” I asked. Jude stiffened beside me and I tucked myself closer to him anticipating the same treatment I’d received in my holding cell for daring to utter those same words. Tex noticed the movement.
“You don’t.” The main spat out, his thin lips settling into a menacing line. When he moved suddenly, I couldn’t help myself, I flinched.
Just a small movement.
Most people wouldn’t have noticed but Jude had. His hand squeezed into a tight fist. As quickly and nonchalantly as I could, I took it into my hand and caressed until he opened it enough for me to slip mine into.
Tex eyed me before pointing over to the line for food. “They’ll take care of you there. I’ll be back.” He nodded at us both before heading back through the door leaving the much smaller man trying to keep pace with his long, sure strides.
“Let’s grab some food,” Jude said without looking at me.
I knew without looking up that almost every single eye in the room was on us. Jesus, it felt like high school all over again. A woman who looked to be in her mid-forties with short, salt and pepper hair and a face filled with large freckles slapped down a tray in front of each of us.
Each of our trays had a small pile of white rice with a ladle of canned beef stew poured on top. There was a mini bread roll and a cookie, too. I smiled widely at the woman serving us before remembering where I was.
She grinned nastily as she reached down to snatch the cookie off of my tray.
My mouth popped open in utter shock.
Are you fucking kidding me?
After all I’d been through the past twenty-four hours, losing that cookie was like a slap in the face. I made a move to lunge at her, but Jude had already grabbed me around my waist, pulling me away.
“Easy, Tiger,” he murmured into my hair.
I shuddered.
Damn him and his silky-smooth voice.
I snatched my tray from the counter and turned with Jude to find a seat.
We sat in the back of the room and I opted to sit in front of Jude instead of next to him, even though that put my back to the exit and almost everyone in the room. During a zombie apocalypse, it doesn’t take long to realize that you never want your back to the wall.
Jude looked at me curiously but didn’t remark on it.
We dug into our food, grateful for the warmth and the mutual silence. I moaned when I bit into my piece of bread but cut off abruptly when Jude’s eyes met mine. He wasn’t just worried for our safety—he was pissed. At me.
“Jude, I—”
He held up a hand, his eyes boring into mine, intense and hurt. “You gave up, Mel,” he said so low I could barely hear the words. “You were just going to stand there and let those fuckers have you.”
A fist squeezed around my heart and a dropping sensation tingled across my chest. Like the floor had opened up beneath me.
“What do you mean, Jude?” I asked thickly.
“You gave up out there,” he accused.
My eyes went wide. He thought I’d planned on just dying. That I was giving up when we were pinned at the fence outside the factory.
“I didn’t,” I said softly. “I swear to you I didn’t.”
Jude’s eyes met mine searchingly. I reached out a hand and laid mine on top of his fisted one. The back of his knuckles were hard beneath my hand before relaxing and softening a bit.
“I would never do that to you, Jude,” I said with one hundred percent honesty, surprising even myself. “It won’t ever happen,” I promised.
Jude’s shining brown eyes met mine for a moment.
“You better fucking believe it won’t.” He gave my hand a squeeze before resuming his meal.
“Is that an order, Agent?” I whispered, my eyes wide to keep from crying.
Jude’s intense stare took my breath away. “Damn straight, woman.”
I rolled my eyes at that and pulled back to finish off my stew.
When I eyeballed Jude’s cookie, he sighed and broke it in half, offering me the bigger part.
I grinned and took it before he could change his mind. He just chuckled and shook his head, muttering something about females and driving him insane.
“Looks like Germain is the man in charge,” I said, biting into the cookie.
“Yeah, no telling who this guy is, or how in the world he could have taken the base,” he said with his eyes on his plate. “Look at this place, it had to have been damn near impossible to break into. But to take it over completely?” Jude shook his head and clenched his jaw.
“It had to be someone already here, someone they wouldn’t suspect.”
He met my eyes. A traitor. Someone dangerous and maybe even unstable.
“We need to find out if there are any prisoners,” I said in a whisper.
“I hope Major Parsons is okay, Jude,” I said gently, making sure no one overheard us.
Jude nodded. And Manuel and Big Ben, too was left unspoken.
“Maybe we could earn their trust somehow,” I suggested.
Jude snorted.
“They won’t trust me. Hell, they already hate me.”
I flinched. He said it with such certainly.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, perplexed. “Maybe they’ll want to recruit you or something.”
Jude smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant one. “I know because I have something almost every man in this place already wants for himself,” he said caustically.
My mouth popped open to ask him what in the hell he could possibly have when it struck me with the force of a small hurricane.
Me.
Sweet baby Jesus. I was a hot commodity. I fidgeted in my seat and barely restrained myself from glancing behind me to see if all the eyes I’d felt on my back were still there or not.
I’d never thought of myself as all that hot. Maybe kind of pretty. But I’d always just focused on school and was too tomboyish to draw the attention of guys when there were girls like Jess walking around. But suddenly I felt like a hunk of meat in an ocean filled with sharks.
I shivered.
“Exactly,” he said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t think this through well enough. I didn’t take into consideration that if the base had been taken over, the male population would likely be higher.” He ran a hand over his face, and I could tell for the second time that day he was truly worried for my safety.
“Maybe I can use it to our advantage,” I said gently.
Jude drew back, his eyes going wide.
“Not like that,” I said. Jeepers.
“I meant that maybe I could get some information from some of the guys, maybe from Tex.”
Jude’s eyes hardened and his fist tightened on the table.
“He seems different than the others,” I said thoughtfully. “It’s just an instinct though. I may be wrong. He is here after all and that isn’t a point in his favor.”
Jude nodded in agreement about that last part.
“Alright but be careful and if you feel even a little uneasy, just forget it. It isn’t worth your life. Nothing is.” He waited for my response and breathed a sigh of relief when I nodded my agreement.
An armed guard showed up just as we finished our lunch. We were required to go to the rec room for the time being.
Jude put a hand on my back and steered me into the common room and over to a small seating area. Several green plastic chairs with metal legs surrounded a table large enough to seat six or so people.
There was a teenaged boy, a woman with curly, brown hair—probably in her
late twenties—and a small girl with strawberry-blonde hair sitting there. The little girl was playing with a doll on the floor and the teen looked extremely bored. They all eyed us warily when we sat down in their area.
I glanced around the room, taking note of the sixty or so people walking around, playing games, or otherwise entertaining themselves. I also took note of several people who looked a little bit too interested in Jude and me. I stood up and stretched after twenty minutes of inactivity, pointing to a bookshelf across the room when Jude glanced up at me questioningly.
“I’ll be right back. I’m just going to check out what they have to read,” I said with a forced smile. I really wanted to see if I could find out anything however small it might have been.
The bookshelf didn’t have much in the way of novels, but it did have the entire Harry Potter series. I picked up the first book and remembered the day my mom had bought me the entire collector’s set for Christmas one year. I smiled to myself and thumbed through the first few pages.
“Hey, sweet thang, how ‘bout you come over here and play a few games with me and my friends?” A guttural voice came from directly behind me and my good memories immediately vanished into thin air. I glanced over my shoulder at Jude, who had already risen halfway out of his seat, and shook my head. His eyes flared in anger, but he sat back down.
I didn’t look at the guy who spoke to me.
“I’d rather not,” I said indifferently. A few catcalls and guys laughing at their friend’s rebuff made the guy bolder.
“You think you’re too good for me or something?” he hissed.
“Not at all,” I said with a shrug. “I’m just not interested.”
And even though I played it off, a tinge of fear clung to me. I’d dealt with some dicey situations with a few male survivors during the six months after that first day but being manhandled and closed up in the cell the past twenty-four hours was still too fresh in my mind.
A hand gripped my shoulder and spun me around. The guy pushed me up against the bookshelf with a hand around my throat and brought his face close to mine. I stared into bloodshot hazel eyes and a face sporting a hooked nose and a scar running the length of his cheek. He hadn’t shaved in several days it seemed.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, little girl,” he said against my cheek, his foul breath fanning my face.
An armed guard came up next to us and put a hand on the man’s arm.
“Better not,” he muttered.
I don’t think he wanted to help me. Sounded more like he didn’t want his buddy to get into trouble.
“You better back the fuck off!” Jude barked from a foot away.
I held a hand out letting Jude know I had this in hand. I heard his grunt of frustration.
I pondered for a second why I actually kind of wished to see what Jude would do if he got ahold of the guy. But I regretfully shook off the thought.
Right now, I had a lesson to teach.
I pushed myself into the guy, catching him off guard when my body crashed flush into his own, knocking him back a step. What he and the guard failed to see soon enough was my hand darting out and snatching the ten-inch blade from the guard’s leg.
By the time either of them could react, I’d already swept the septic-breathed dude’s legs out from under him and rode his body to the ground with the blade pressing directly into the hollow of his throat. The guard let out a surprised gasp, which only made me smile.
I pressed the blade into his throat enough to draw a line of blood.
He whimpered, his eyes wide.
The entire room was deathly silent.
“You don’t seem to know how to take no for an answer,” I hissed down at the guy I was perched on top of. “Guys like you would be behind bars right now, away from the rest of society and such. But things are pretty fucked up right now, so worthless pieces of shit like you think you’re above the law, huh?” I pressed my knife down a little more.
The guy didn’t dare breathe too deeply.
“Maybe I should drive this into your throat right now. I’m sure it would go in as easily as it does one of the hundreds of undead I’ve taken out. Maybe easier.” I smiled, letting the jerk see in my eyes that I meant exactly what I said.
“I’d be doing what’s left of society a favor,” I said, pretending to mull it over.
“Melody, don’t.” It was Tex.
I didn’t look up or acknowledge him.
Instead, I leaned down and brought my mouth close to the guy’s ear to whisper. “I swear to God and on all that is holy, if I ever hear of you hurting someone, or even looking sideways at some helpless woman or girl, I will fucking find you and cut your throat without even blinking. You understand me?”
When he squeaked a very tiny “yes” as an answer, I snatched the knife from his throat and lifted myself off his prone body in one smooth movement.
I held the knife out to the guard and turned to face Tex. Jude was standing there too, like a large storm cloud about ready to rain down a torrent of booming lightning. Sparks were flying from his golden eyes and believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jude would have burned down the world for me.
I gulped.
“Follow me. Germain wants to see you both.” Tex muttered after an intense moment.
Tex strode off, leaving Jude and I hurrying to keep up.
So much for stealthily checking things out. It looked like we were going to be led straight to Germain himself. Time to meet the man who overthrew the secret Charlotte Army base.
The layout of the base was much like the one close to Light Oak, but it was a lot larger and a bit more complicated with extra corridors and blocked off spaces. Too much for me to memorize as we strode briskly by.
“So, this Germain, he some kind of leader or something here?” I asked Tex nonchalantly.
He chuckled darkly beneath his breath. “Something like that.”
I turned and caught Jude looking at me; his expression matched my own. What on earth was going on around here?
We stopped in front of a door that had a guard posted outside of it. They were wearing what I’d come to realize was the standard uniform of the Germain militia. Black pants. Black tee shirt. And black combat boots.
Not very daring when it came to fashion.
When we approached, the guard quickly moved to the side for Tex and the rest of us to pass. Looked like Tex was important. At least higher up than a regular foot soldier. Good to know.
We entered a large room with a huge octagon shaped table in its center. Old toy advertisements dotted the brown paneled walls. The buzzing and snapping of the fluorescent bulbs above us cast an eerie flickering yellow glow across the room.
Sitting at the head of the table in one of the six faux leather chairs, a man with a shaved head and a goatee watched us enter with hooded eyes. The spider tattoo that looked to be crawling out of his eye was his most endearing feature. I could tell immediately he was someone in charge, someone who commanded authority. Germain.
I did a quick search around the table and room. There were five other people in the room seated and standing close to the man sitting at the head of the table. Four men and one young woman. I didn’t pay them much mind, I wanted to find out what Germain was up to.
“Melody Carter,” the man intoned from where he sat.
I raised my chin and met his steely, blue gaze. “What are you and this Army man, Jude, doing here in Charlotte?” he asked, getting straight to the point.
“I have family and friends in Charlotte,” I said truthfully. I did have friends in Charlotte a long time ago. “I needed to see if anyone was left, if we could find any of them.”
“Why wait so long?” he asked. “Why wait six months after the outbreak if you were so concerned?”
“I lived by myself in the woods for almost six months before I met Jude.” I motioned toward Jude and he put an arm across my shoulders. “I didn’t think I could do it by myself. With him, I thought maybe I would have
a chance. But the city was worse than I ever imagined.”
A chuckle came from the young woman standing close to Germain. Jude’s arm tightened on my shoulder. Something niggled the back of my mind, something I should have noticed earlier.
I sucked in a breath.
“How did you know my last name?” I snapped. Jude’s entire body became rigid beside me.
“I only told Tex my first name, but you called me by my last name as well.” I narrowed my eyes at the man whose face hadn’t shown a single ounce of emotion or surprise.
“Ah, Mel, you always were a smart one.” The feminine voice rang out clearly through the room from the young blond woman, who now moved directly behind the man I’d been speaking with. She placed a hand on the back of his chair.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Surely, I’ve not changed so much that you wouldn’t recognize your best friend,” she said with a wicked gleam in her eye.
“Oh my God! Jess?” The room spun slightly. Jude put his arm around my waist to keep me upright. I stared with undisguised shock.
It was her.
Her long, straight blonde hair had been chopped short and spiked up on the top of her head and she had several ear piercings. Her arms were more muscular, and her face was hard. She’d traded in her designer clothing and heels for a black button up shirt and black leather pants.
She had changed so much that I could barely find pieces of the old Jess at all in the young woman standing before me. Then my mind caught up with everything.
Germain. Germain wasn’t a first name. It was a last name.
Jessica Germain. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Jessica was the leader of an underground militia.
My laughter, bordering on hysteria, echoed throughout the room. Jude and Tex glanced at each other and then at me, clearly at a loss.
I laughed so hard I cried.
I laughed until my sides cramped.
What has the world fucking come to?
If You Don’t Know Me by Now
Jessica’s eyes bore into mine, her jaw clenched. She didn’t step forward and neither did I, even if that was my first instinct. I wanted to run up to her and throw my arms around her, but I didn’t. Something about Germain, this room, the way she’d changed stopped me.
State of (Book 1): State of Decay Page 18