“No. He’s a great man. He’s ten times the man you could ever dream of being! He’s saved my life many times, and that night he saved me again…in more ways than one,” was Abby’s defiant response, though she whispered that last part. Tears moistened Zach’s eyes as Savage turned the television off. He bowed his head and said nothing. Henry had Zach on the ropes with this hidden camera crap. How in the hell had he gotten here anyway? “Doesn’t matter,” Zach thought. He had gotten there and was getting his revenge on Zach. That was what mattered.
“Is Henry here?” Zach asked without raising his head.
“No. Civilians are not authorized to stay here. And no, I won’t tell you where he went.” Zach was still silent, so Savage said, “Are you ready to confess?”
“I’m innocent!” Zach said. He lifted his head and, in frustration, he added, “And don’t you guys have bigger fish to fry, more important things to do than play ‘cops and robbers’?”
“We’ve been tasked to hold security in our area of operations, and that includes bringing justice down on creeps like you.”
“I demand a trial by my peers, per my Constitutional rights.”
“That’s what this is.”
Zach sighed. He was finished. There was no way out. “What happens to Abby? The others?” he asked quietly.
“Your friends will be questioned, have their information taken, and then released, as they had nothing to do with the incident in question. As for Objective Alpha, she will be held as your accomplice and face the same fate you will: death by firing squad…unless you confess your guilt. In that case, she will be transported to a safe area and be given to a family that is fit to raise her.”
Zach said nothing as a lone tear escaped his eye and blazed a path down his soiled cheek. It got caught up in his stubble of a beard, but eventually broke through and glided gently off of his jaw line, splashing on his boot. There was only one way to save Abby, and that was to let her go.
“Can I talk to her?” Zach asked. Savage motioned for one of the airmen to hand him his radio. “Captain Frost, this is Savage,” he said, after keying in the tiny black device. After a short pause, Captain Frost’s voice came through. “Yes sir?” he asked.
“Give Objective Alpha a radio and unbind her hands so that she can speak into it.”
“Roger that,” was the response. Savage flicked out a pocket knife, cut Zach’s hands free, and then pushed the radio over to him. For a second, Zach considered fighting his way out of the room. The demon could sense Zach’s anger and wanted to do things his way. His hands were free now and all the people in the room were within just a few feet of him. He could easily disarm one of the guards, kill the others, and then fight his way to Abby and get her out of here. But this thought evaporated as quickly as it had come. There were too many people on this base to try to shoot his way out in the middle of the day. He would only get himself, and probably Abby, killed.
Zach pushed the ‘talk’ button and said, “Bug? You there?”
“I’m here, Zach.”
“Bug, I want you to listen to me. I love you. I love you more than life itself and would do anything to keep you safe. You know that, right?”
A short pause followed, then, “Yes, of course. I love you too. Zach, what’s wrong?”
Zach hesitated before answering, as he tried to sort out all of the thoughts in his head, the emotions in his heart. “I uh-” he started to say, but his voice choked up in a sob. “I’m done, Abby. They’ve got what they call video evidence against me, and I have nothing. And unless I plead guilty…you’ll die with me.”
Abby was silent. She pushed the button to talk, held it for a second, but then released it. She pushed it again and, in a shaky voice, said, “So what…what are you saying, Dad?”
Zach took a deep breathe to compose himself. He could tell Abby was scared, so he needed to be strong for her. “Abby, I’m going to do it. You’ll be fine, they’ll take you somewhere safe and make sure you’re taken care of. But I can’t come with you. I’m sorry.”
There was a long pause, and Zach began to think that maybe his transmission had not gotten through. He was about to try again when he suddenly heard Abby’s voice, but not through the radio. He heard her shriek though the thin wall separating them.
“NOOOO! Nononononono! You can’t do this, Dad! You can’t, I won’t let you!” she screamed. She jumped out of her chair, ran to the wall, and slammed her fist against the lone barrier between her and Zach. Zach could hear her sobbing and it tore his heart to pieces. “You didn’t do anything, Zach! Tell them! Tell them I did it! Don’t let them take you from me!”
Zach went over to the wall and knelt down. “Abigail,” he whispered into the radio, “I’m so sorry. But I told you that I would always protect you, no matter the cost. This is the only way. You have to be strong, Bug. It’ll all be okay.”
Abby was slumped against the wall and was crying loudly. “No, it won’t,” she sobbed.
“I’m sorry, Abby. But this is the only way.”
Abby wiped her tears with her forearm and said, “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, sweetie.”
Zach leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed, exhaling loudly. The silence in the room was broken only by Abby’s soft sobs coming from the other room, and it weighed on Zach like a thick coat on a hot summer day. He opened his eyes, glared at Savage, and said, “Happy now?”
Showing no emotion, Savage said, “You and the others will be imprisoned here for the night. Tomorrow morning they will go free and you will die.”
“Outstanding,” Zach muttered gloomily. Savage then left the room, followed by Higgins. The other two airmen took Zach by the arms and marched him out the door. They turned left down the hallway, taking him towards a stairwell, but Zach looked over his shoulder as he heard the door behind him open up. Abby was also being escorted by two airmen, but in the opposite direction.
When she saw Zach, she suddenly tore free from her captors and ran forward. “Zach! Don’t go! Please!” she cried, but the men quickly grabbed her again and carried her away down the hall as she continued to kick and scream.
Zach called back to her, “It’s gonna be okay, Abby! You’re gonna be just fine!” Then he was led around a corner and Abby disappeared from sight, but Zach, and probably the entire building, could still hear her desperate pleas. His heart melted as he was led up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the building. He was led down a long hallway and then turned right into a tiny room. One of the airmen with him unlocked the door, pushed him inside, and then closed it.
Zach looked around his temporary quarters. There was nothing besides a cot, a lone light bulb, and a bucket that probably served as a toilet. Exhausted, he sat down on the cot with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He did nothing but stare down at the floor for a long time. Much later, he opened up his shoulder pocket and pulled out the picture of his wife. At least they had not taken this from him. Memories came rushing back as he gently traced her cheek with his finger.
“Alright, you know the challenge,” Zach said to his girlfriend, the pretty lieutenant, “Three mags of twenty-five rounds, only shots in the black count. Same rifle, same rounds, same mags, so no crying when you lose.”
“Psh, whatever. I’ll beat you so bad, you’ll be on your knees begging for mercy,” she said.
“Well, that’s kind of true,” Zach muttered under his breathe.
Bobby, Zach’s friend and the owner of the rifle range they were on, spoke up now and said, “Ready?” Bobby had kept his range open past closing hours just for his friend and his girlfriend. They both loved shooting, so Zach had taken them here for a little contest after a nice, romantic dinner together to celebrate the second anniversary of their first date in Chicago.
“Go!” said Bobby, and Zach and his girlfriend began shooting. They were to go through one mag from the standing, one from the kneeling, and one from the prone. The lieutenant was a very good sho
oter, and almost every round was impacting the black, the center of the target. Zach was taking his time, firing each round with care. And by the time his girlfriend had finished, he still had almost half a mag left to burn.
“A little slow, cowboy,” she gloated after Zach had fired his last round.
“It’s all about round placement, not speed,” Zach replied as Bobby cleared out their rifles and they removed their ballistic eyewear and earplugs. “Let’s see how you did.”
They walked down the range towards their targets and inspected Zach’s targets first. He had nearly flawless shooting, with only two rounds missing the center. Walking over to the lieutenant’s targets, they again counted two that had missed.
“Are you kidding me? A tie?” she said in frustration.
“Well, truth be told,” Zach said slowly, “I’ve got one saved round left to fire from the kneeling.”
“What? Well, what were you waiting for?” she asked.
“I wasn’t sure if this one would be a hit or miss, so I wanted to wait for just the right time,” Zach replied. And without another word, he took a knee in front of the lieutenant as he pulled a beautiful ring out of his pocket and held it up. She gasped as she covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes starting to tear up.
Ever eloquent, and hardly one for formalities, Zach said simply, “So…how crazy would it be if we got married?”
The lieutenant laughed and said, “Pretty crazy. Let’s do it.”
Zach sighed and he put the photograph back in his pocket.
Chapter Eight
Abby was inconsolable. After she had been moved into the room with Al, Amber, Diane, and Ross, she had told them everything: why they were there, what had happened at the Marshall Farm (although she left out several extremely painful and personal details regarding her and Henry), and what was going to happen to Zach.
“This isn’t right. Zach wouldn’t just up and murder a whole family in cold blood!” said Ross as he paced back and forth. Abby sat in a corner with her arms around her legs, her head bowed against her knees. She could not cry anymore, but she still let out the occasional sob. Amber sat next to her, rubbing her back and trying to calm her down. Diane and Al sat in chairs, wondering what they could do.
“No, not a whole family and not entirely in cold blood,” Al said quietly, referencing the way Zach had killed Vicky. He didn’t blame Zach too much for what he did given the circumstances at the time, but the cruelty he’d displayed didn’t sit entirely right with Al either. Amber gave her father a mean look, letting him know that now was not the time to be bringing that up. Fortunately, Abby had not heard this remark, so Al just rolled his eyes and leaned up against the wall.
“Maybe we could talk to this Major General,” said Diane. “Maybe hearing all our testimonies will change his mind.”
“They’ve got video evidence, they aren’t budging,” Abby said in a muffled voice. “And if Zach doesn’t plead guilty, they’ll kill me along with him. He’s doing it to save me.”
“Those bastards,” Amber muttered, shaking her head in disgust.
Abby was not entirely correct, however. Unbeknownst to her, Major General Savage was at this very moment contemplating his decision to pronounce Zach guilty. After witnessing the raw, undeniably genuine emotion shown when Zach and Abby spoke for the last time, he began to doubt Henry’s story a tiny bit.
He had gone home with the video evidence and played it on the big screen TV he owned. He watched it over and over again, this time looking through the goggles of Zach’s testimony. He tried to read the lips of everyone talking. He thought he could make out the name ‘Frank’ when Anne spoke. When Hannah grabbed Abby, he now noticed her hand picking up something from the table. He paused it and tried to get a better look, but the quality was too poor to make out anything small. Was that a knife? Her hand was near Abby’s throat, so that was certainly a possibility. Finally, late in the evening, he turned it off.
He was going to have to sleep on this, he decided. A man’s life hung in the balance, and he wanted to let everything he had been told sink in before declaring Zach to be guilty or not guilty.
Savage lived alone in his house, having sent his two children away to the new, temporary American capital in Wyoming at the beginning of The Crisis. His brother lived there and had agreed to watch over his kids until Savage left the Wild or The Crisis was over, whichever came first.
Savage passed by a picture on the wall of his staircase, a picture of him and his wife at the beach. He paused to look at it as he always did. His wife, Caroline, had died eight years ago in a car accident. She had been driving home from work at the pet hospital one night when a drunk driver barreled through a red light doing 100 miles per hour and T-boned her car on the driver’s side. He escaped with a minor concussion, but Caroline was pronounced dead on the scene. This had left Savage as a very cold, bitter man, quick to pass judgment on criminals, which is why he had been so quick to condemn Zach.
The next picture was a professional, studio picture of his two children, his daughter Molly and his son Michael, who were now ages fourteen and twelve, respectively. But this picture had been taken five years ago, not long before the first zombies began to show up. “Molly’s the same age as Objective Alph- I mean, Abby,” Savage thought as he slowly walked up the last few stairs and into his bedroom.
“My God, that girl’s sobbing,” he thought as he changed into a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt. “What was it she said? Tell them she did it? That girl has guts.” The Major General was exhausted with all these thoughts. He hoped a good night’s sleep would clear everything up for him. Maybe when he awoke he would see the truth clearly. He wished he could have some kind of sign, like all those old prophets in the Bible. He lifted his bedroom window open a crack to let that cool, summer night breeze into his room. Then he climbed into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
Meanwhile, Abby was doing some serious thinking of her own. She felt utterly hopeless, like a great weight was pressing down on her chest. Henry had Zach in what looked like an airtight box of guilt. Zach had not been able to get himself out of it, so what could Abby do? Nothing. She was just a kid after all, a little girl who had been nothing but a burden to Zach for as long as he had known her. And now, because of her stupidity back at the Marshall Farm, she was his executioner. She really was helpless.
“No. No, I’m not,” she thought. “I’m not a little girl, I’m a woman. I’m not a burden. I can do something!” She was not going to let Zach die, not without first exerting herself to her physical and mental limits to save him, and then further if she had to.
She was resolved to not give up on Zach, but she needed a plan. She had seen that they had taken him towards the stairwell, and assumed he was upstairs. If she could get to him and set him free, then he could get them all out of here. But how to get him free? That would be the hard part. And so Abby thought and strategized and planned until it felt like her brain would burst.
Several hours later, Abby’s watch beeped, telling her that it was two o’clock in the morning. Everyone in the building except for a few guards and the two airmen on duty had gone home, so it was as quiet as a church on a Monday. Amber, Al, Diane, and Ross had all been asleep for hours, but not Abby. She had sat in the dark room, waiting for the right time to spring her plan, when she figured the guards would be most tired and least likely to suspect that anything was wrong. It was a desperate plan, and it required a lot of luck, but Abby had no other options. She was either leaving this place with Zach, or she would die trying.
She stood up and let her hair down so she could muss it up like she had been asleep. She did her best to look sleepy as she walked towards the door. She knew that a guard was posted right outside, and that he was due to be relieved in an hour (it was amazing all the information you could learn by listening through a door), so right now he would likely be thinking of nothing but how soon his relief would come.
Abby knocked on the door gently and then stepped
back. She heard the man curse and fumble with some keys, then the door was unlocked and pushed open a crack. The thin blade of light from the hallway fell on Abby’s face, causing her to squint and look even more tired.
“What?” the young airman asked curtly. He was skinny and looked to be barely eighteen, probably the son of one of the airmen stationed here.
“I have to go to the bathroom!” Abby whispered, doing her best to sound urgent.
“Really? You can’t wait like, one more hour?” the guard asked, clearly annoyed.
“No! I have to pee!” Abby hissed.
“Son of a…alright, come on,” the young man said as he opened the door and stepped aside, motioning for Abby to walk in front of him. She stepped out into the hallway and the man closed the door behind them, locking it with his key. He tugged on the handle to ensure it was locked, and then put a hand on Abby’s shoulder as he directed her down the hallway towards the bathrooms.
“Thanks,” said Abby as she pushed the door to the women’s bathroom open. The man started to follow her in, but Abby spun around, faked a look of indignation, and said, “Hey! This is the girl’s bathroom!”
“Oh my God. You cannot be serious,” the man said, but Abby glared back defiantly. “Whatever, fine! Just be quick.” He retreated back into the hallway, standing in front of the door with his arms folded across his chest, waiting impatiently. He tapped his foot against the floor as he waited and eventually glanced at his watch. The girl had been in there for over a minute. Letting out a frustrated sigh, he pushed the door open and stepped into the dimly lit bathroom. “Jesus Christ, kid! You done yet or what?”
No response. The man glanced underneath the row of stalls but did not see any feet. “Shit,” he muttered. Suddenly he felt a cool breeze and noticed that the small rectangular window on the far wall was open. “Oh shit!” he said as he ran across the bathroom. He grabbed the ledge of the window and pulled himself up to look outside, but he could not see the girl anywhere. “I am so fucked,” he said as he lowered himself back down to the ground.
His Name Was Zach Page 16