Jacqueline was staring straight at Simone through the window, beseeching Simone to help her, her face contorted with anguish as two flesh eaters were biting into her shoulders and arms. Cringing at the spectacle, Simone didn’t know how Jacqueline could stand the pain and stay conscious as the ghouls ate her alive.
A third flesh eater dug its hand into Jacqueline’s stomach and ripped out her intestine. With a twisted maniacal grin on its face, the creature wrenched the intestine out of Jacqueline’s stomach and drew away from her unspooling the blood-soaked gut with it.
And still Jacqueline remained conscious, screaming for help at the top of her lungs.
How could Jacqueline not pass out from all the pain she was in? wondered Simone in shock.
The flesh eater set to scarfing down Jacqueline’s innards, stuffing them into its mouth and walking toward her, shortening the length of the intestine. When the gut became too short, the creature hauled out more of it from Jacqueline’s rent belly.
Face livid, Jacqueline looked like she was on the verge of fainting. Her eyes fluttered as she became limp in the flesh eaters’ embrace of death.
Simone knew she had to run out the door now and save Jacqueline or it would be too late. Even though Simone knew Jacqueline’s life was on the line, she could not bring herself to move her feet. She could not move! She could only stand and watch in consternation, gawking, eyes wide, as the three flesh eaters polished off her sister in a welter of steaming blood that sluiced into the street amidst the riot of hysterical patients spewing out of the hospital to their deaths at the hands of the ravenous creatures in an orgy of bloodletting. Chaos.
Simone smashed her fist into the mirror with an explosive mixture of anger and fear. The glass shattered on impact, slicing and bloodying her hand. Shards of glass clattered into the sink. Simone screamed as much at the pain in her hand as at her impotence to save her sister.
The bathroom door swung open.
Victoria rushed in. She brought up in consternation at the sight of Simone’s bloody hand and the broken glass and blood spilled in the sink.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
She grabbed a white towel from the rack on the wall to her right, snatched Simone’s bleeding hand, and wrapped the towel around it.
Simone fell to sobbing, tears streaking her face.
“I couldn’t save her,” she muttered.
“It wasn’t your fault. You can’t keep dwelling on it. It’s over.”
“What’s going on?” said Swiggum, slipping through the doorway behind Victoria.
“She had an accident,” said Victoria. “That’s all.”
Swiggum leered at the bloodshed and broken glass and left.
Halverson appeared in Swiggum’s place. “Do you need help?”
“No,” said Victoria. “We can take care of this.”
CHAPTER 36
Halverson backed out of the bathroom into the main room, where Swiggum was waiting for him.
“I’ve been watching how you move, and I saw how you tried to head-butt the guard,” said Swiggum. “You know how to take care of yourself. I’m thinking you’re Special Forces. Am I right?”
“No,” said Halverson. “I’m a journalist.”
“You knew what your were doing when you went in for that head-butt. You took off like a rocket into that guy.”
Halverson massaged his sore jaw where Wolfman had landed his fist. “And he clobbered me.”
“Only because they knew you were coming. If we had caught them off guard, it would’ve been lights out for that guy after you butted him.”
“That was the plan.”
“So you are Special Forces?”
Halverson didn’t want to give Swiggum the whole story, but he decided he should give him something.
“I was in the marines,” said Halverson. “I was in Afghanistan.”
“I knew it. Special Forces?”
“No. Nothing fancy. I did my tour of duty and left the military.”
“How come?”
“Watching my buddies get their arms and legs blown off by IEDs had something to do with it.”
“Whereabouts were you?”
“The Bagram Airfield.”
“Place must’ve been a meat grinder,” said Swiggum, shaking his head. “I hope you wasted plenty of the Taliban.”
“I did my part.”
“I knew you had to have some kind of military background.”
“Nothing special. Just a grunt,” lied Halverson.
“You still got it, though, buddy.”
“Got what?”
“The skillset to fight.”
Halverson said nothing.
There was no way he was going to reveal to Swiggum that he worked for the National Clandestine Service at the CIA, especially not with Guzman eavesdropping on everybody in the room. The NCS, not the marines, had trained Halverson to fight at the Farm at Camp Peary.
“Did the war mess you up?” asked Swiggum, his voice low.
“I don’t sleep that well.”
“Do you have what do you call it? Post-traumatic stress disorder?”
“Would you mind changing the subject?” said Victoria, overhearing them as she exited the bathroom with Simone.
“What happened to her?” said Nordstrom, eyeballing Simone’s hand wrapped in a bloodstained towel as Simone and Victoria walked toward him.
“Just an accident,” said Victoria. “She’ll be all right.”
“What’d she do? Break her hand?”
“She nicked herself on the mirror. Don’t worry about it.”
Nordstrom glanced toward the bathroom, which had its door ajar that blocked his vision of the mirror and sink.
He scratched his head. “How do you nick yourself on a mirror?”
Victoria said nothing.
Nordstrom angled into the bathroom. He saw the broken mirror. Wincing, he saw the blood-spattered glass fragments in the sink.
He left the bathroom. “A doozy of a nick.”
“I’ll clean up in there,” said Victoria. “You keep Simone calm.”
Victoria retreated into the bathroom.
Nordstrom ambled toward Simone, who was holding up her towel-swathed hand near her face as she stood next to the table of leftovers. “You OK?”
Lethargic and dazed, Simone didn’t answer.
“We have to figure out how to get out of here,” Halverson told Nordstrom under his breath.
“Why do you want to get out of here?” Nordstrom swept his eyes across the tabletop. “We just had a scrumptious dinner.” Smiling, he patted his full stomach.
“There’s something not right here,” said Swiggum, joining Halverson and Nordstrom.
“Not that I can see,” said Nordstrom. “They fed us and untied us. What more do you want?”
“But we’re still locked up.”
“And why won’t they decontaminate us?” said Halverson. “That’s what’s bothering me. If they think we’re contaminated, they should be decontaminating us.”
“They said it was hopeless,” said Nordstrom, turning glum. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“How can they know that?” said Swiggum.
“That’s why they’re running blood tests on us,” said Halverson.
“That answers your question, then,” said Nordstrom.
“How so?”
“They’re no gonna decontaminate us until they get the results of the blood tests.”
Halverson wasn’t satisfied. “They ought to be decontaminating us as a matter of course. The longer you delay it, the less effective it is.”
Nordstrom shrugged it off. “You worry too much. It makes perfect sense to me. There’s no point in decontaminating us until they know we’re infected.”
“But they do know we’re infected,” said Swiggum. “Didn’t you listen to Hector?”
Nordstrom pulled a face. “He was blowing hot air.”
Swiggum paced around in a circle. “No, he wasn’t. If you had listened to him,
you would have seen he was manipulating us. It’s some kind of psyops campaign.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. You lost me there.”
“He’s manipulating us by telling us we’re all gonna die from radiation poisoning.”
“Why?” said Nordstrom incredulously. “What’s the point?”
“He wants to exert control over us and break us. Scare us into submission.”
Nordstrom shook his head in bafflement. “I don’t get it. Psyops? Isn’t that military shit? Were you in the military or something?”
“No. But I know how they operate. It’s all about control. Break down the prisoner’s will then get him to do whatever you want.”
“You’re paranoid. That’s what you are.”
Halverson put his oar in. “Swiggum’s right. We need to get out of here.”
“You too?” said Nordstrom, not believing his ears. “OK. If you guys are so smart, why do they want to control us? What do they want us to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Swiggum, scratching his chin, looking puzzled. “It can’t be good, though.”
At that moment the guards flung the door open and kicked a man into the room. The guy stumbled forward and sprawled onto the center of the floor with a groan.
The guards slammed the door shut.
CHAPTER 37
“Look what the cat dragged in,” said Nordstrom.
The thirtysomething guy looked like a schlub, decided Halverson as he helped the man to his feet.
The guy had black scruffy hair, a stubbly round face, and blubbery lips. His baggy jeans hung low on his hips in peril of falling off any moment. His white T reached halfway down to his waist, ending up just over his bellybutton, exposing his hairy paunch that had the color and consistency of dough. When the guy hiked up his pants, Halverson could see his black high-tops were laced only three-quarters of the way up the uppers, leaving portions of their tongues lolling over their dirty laces.
The schlub didn’t bother to thank Halverson for helping him off the floor. Standing up, the guy looked about five eight.
“Fuck those guys,” he said, glaring at the shut door.
“Who are you?” asked Halverson.
“Sam Klecko.”
“I’m Chad Halverson.” Halverson introduced the rest of the group.
Klecko picked up on the leftovers on the table. “I wish I’d gotten here sooner.”
“They serve a good dinner here. I’ll say that for them,” said Nordstrom.
Klecko sidled over to the table and plucked a stale roll out of a serving dish. He took a large bite out of the roll.
“What happened?” asked Swiggum.
“A pack of flesh eaters attacked me in the desert. That guy called Wolfman and a bunch of his buddies saved me and hauled me here in a black four-by-four.”
“You got lucky,” said Victoria, overhearing their conversation as she walked out of the bathroom.
“I wouldn’t call it luck,” said Klecko, brushing off his flanks with his hands. “The scumbags kicked me in here like a dog.”
“That’s Victoria,” said Halverson.
Klecko nodded at her.
“You could’ve been killed at the hands of the flesh eaters,” said Nordstrom. “That’s why you’re lucky to be here.”
Klecko snickered. “Yeah, I’m lucky to be a prisoner now.”
“You’re safe from the flesh eaters. That’s the main thing. Nothing worse than getting eaten alive by those filthy things.”
Klecko scoped out the room. “I sure don’t want to be stuck in this dive for the rest of my life.”
“Why not? You won’t get radiation poisoning here,” said Nordstrom.
“Being locked in a room isn’t my idea of a good time. You can’t tell me you guys actually want to stay cooped up here.”
“We sure don’t,” said Swiggum.
“Speak for yourself,” said Nordstrom.
Swiggum gave Nordstrom a look. “I always do.”
“I want out,” said Klecko. “No way can you tell me this is a good deal.”
“We’re on the same page.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“How’d you get here?” said Halverson. He wanted to know more about Klecko before answering.
“From Carson City.”
“How is it there?”
“Wasted, like everywhere else. First the plague hit. The zombies tore everybody apart. Then there was radiation sickness after the nukes rained out of the sky.”
“Are you alone?”
“I am now,” answered Klecko, distraught. Grimacing, he ran his hand down over his face.
“What do you mean?” asked Swiggum.
“My wife and son bought it along the way. They made it out of Carson City with me, but they came down with radiation sickness.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Victoria.
“How come you didn’t get it?” asked Swiggum.
“I guess I wasn’t exposed to it as long as they were,” answered Klecko.
“They got my sister,” muttered Simone.
“What?”
“The flesh eaters did.”
“Oh,” said Klecko, reluctant to pursue the conversation.
“Did you meet Hector?” asked Halverson.
“No,” said Klecko, bemused. “Who’s this Hector guy?”
“He’s the one that rules the roost.”
“The warden, huh?”
“He’s not a warden,” said Nordstrom. “This ain’t the slammer.”
Klecko glanced at the locked door. “Run that by me again.”
“You don’t see any iron bars, do you?”
“That proves nothing.”
Probst decided to put in his two cents. “I don’t think it’s any slammer. We’re safe from the flesh eaters here, and we got a good meal.”
“Agreed!” said Nordstrom.
“Except for the fact that we’re locked in,” said Swiggum. “And I don’t trust the suit calling himself Hector.”
“Why not?”
“Why won’t he meet with us in person? Why do we have to have this wall of bulletproof Plexiglas between us?”
“Sure sounds like the joint,” said Klecko.
“What do you know about joints?” asked Swiggum.
“Nothing. Knock on wood. I’ve never done time.”
“You wouldn’t like it.”
“Did you do time?”
Swiggum said nothing.
“Just asking,” said Klecko. “No offense meant.”
“There’s something hinky about this Hector guy with his humongous blast shelter in the middle of nowhere.”
“You can say that again. Let’s get out of here while the getting’s good. Where you gonna head once you’re out?”
Swiggum was going to answer, but Halverson cut him off with a lie. “We haven’t figured it out yet.”
Halverson knew where he was going. Back east to find out what was left of the government. He had no intention of revealing his true plans to anyone as long as he knew Guzman was eavesdropping on him.
CHAPTER 38
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
Mellors opened the door to his office with a shock to his system as he set eyes on his office. It was a mess. The room had been rifled. Papers were strewn everywhere. On the desk. On the floor. On his chair.
But more importantly, and what elicited a gasp from him, was the fact that Coogan’s silver laptop had disappeared from the top of Mellors’s desk.
Mellors belted to his desk. Maybe the laptop had fallen off the desk when the crook had ransacked the room, Mellors hoped. He cast around on the floor behind the desk and in the kneehole. Helter-skelter papers mantled the floor and even his chair’s seat, but he saw no sign of Coogan’s laptop.
Mellors unlocked and yanked open the bottom drawer of his desk.
He fetched a sigh of relief.
His own laptop was safely ensconced in the bottom of the drawer. At least the thieves
had not taken it. He was thankful for that. He wondered what else the crooks had filched. He could not tell right off the bat. Papers were strewn all over the place, but he had no idea if anyone had actually run off with any of them. He would have to sort through them to make sure. Even then he would be hard-pressed to know if any documents had been swiped.
The only thing he was sure was missing was Coogan’s silver laptop. He knew he had left it sitting on the top of his desk when he had departed from his office.
What if the laptop was the only thing the crooks had ripped off? wondered Mellors. Could that be the case? Why would they glom only Coogan’s laptop and toss papers all over the place? To make it look like they had taken more than just the laptop? To obscure the fact that the laptop was the sole purpose of their theft?
It bore thinking about, decided Mellors. A break-in in the bunker for Christ’s sake! What next? He had thought that only America’s finest had been selected to be saved in the Mount Weather Area B bunker. Did America’s finest consist of B&E artists, as well? He should talk. He ran the NCS, the CIA’s black ops division, the division responsible for break-ins, bribes, and assassinations. But not with their own people as targets. Stealing from your own side was beyond the pale.
What the hell is going on here? thought Mellors.
He debated with himself who to tell about the break-in, if anyone. Could he trust anyone with that knowledge? On the other hand, what difference did it make who he told? The crook already knew about the theft. But did Mellors really want everybody to know Coogan’s laptop had been swiped?
What the crook didn’t know, and this was the reason Mellors wasn’t even more upset than he already was, was that Mellors had migrated all of the documents on Coogan’s laptop to his own laptop. To wit, he still had access to every single one of Coogan’s documents regarding both the Orchid Organization and the apocalypse equation.
Still, shouldn’t he tell somebody about the theft? Wasn’t there anybody he could confide in?
There was definitely something underhanded going on inside the bunker, he decided. Of this he had no doubt, what with Hilda Molson’s so-called suicide and now the theft of Coogan’s laptop from his office. But who was orchestrating the shady doings and to what end? Was there just one guy behind it? Or was there a cabal involved?
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