“She took a liking to him back in Hellfire,” John chuckled. “Says she's looking forward to seeing you stripped and bound again. I told her not to get her hopes up. A lesser man might be jealous to hear his woman talk that way about one of his sworn enemies, but after meeting the delightful Miss Felicity Jane here, I'm suddenly inclined to keep an open mind about a lot of things.”
John took Felicity by the hand and smiled like a mischievous child. The men around the table all broke into laughter. I could feel the blood pounding in my face as I bit my tongue to keep from saying something that would get us all killed. Felicity, on the other hand, had heard enough for one night. She pulled her hand free of his to a chorus of boos, then turned and indignantly stormed off back to the room.
“Go on then,” John dismissed her with a wave of his free hand. “You can't let her just storm off like that and not chase after her. It's what she wants. It's what they all want, more attention.”
The men laughed even harder as I got up and followed Felicity, leaving Sam behind. I caught her by the door and turned her to me. Her face was red and streaked with angry tears.
“Felicity, wait. I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault,” she cried. “It's Sonya's. I can't believe she did this to us.”
“It's going to be all right,” I promised her, walking her back into the room and kissing her on the top of her head.
“How is it going to be okay?”
“I'm not sure yet,” I admitted. “I just know that it is. You'll see. We'll find a way out of this. We always do.”
“I'm scared, Xander,” she said, turning and holding me. “I'm tired and angry and hungry, but more than all of that I am scared of what they're going to do to us.”
“They're not going to hurt us,” I promised her. “Not yet anyway. They can't if they want Moto to go along with their big plans.”
“What does that mean?”
I sat and told her everything John had told me on our walk. It felt good to get it out, to hear it again from a different perspective, but it brought up more questions than it answered. We reclined on the bed and I held her in my arms, brushing her long hair through my fingers while she listened to my heartbeat. Before long I felt the familiar pull of sleep tugging at me. It had been a horrendous day and I was happy to be escaping into the vast emptiness of my dreams. The last thing I heard before going all the way under was the sound of her softly snoring.
Chapter Three
I was chained to one of the wooden poles of the circus tent, and Felicity was chained to the other. Both of us had ropes of metal rings fastened around our waists. We were on the main stage of the circus-turned-slaughterhouse, slipping in the bloody remains of several former human victims. There was a large spotlight shining down on us from overhead, blinding us with its overwhelming brightness. From out of the moaning darkness came zombie clowns in groups of two and three, edging their way forward onto the platform with hunger spawning in their dead, merciless eyes.
I thrashed about trying to free myself, but to no avail. Rows of ghoulish hell-clowns ringed the stage, reaching out toward us with snarling, bloody mouths.
At least they can't reach us on their own, I thought.
Looking over I saw that they were climbing the steps like normal people, helping each other out!
My God, I thought. If they've learned to communicate for real, then we're all doomed. How can we stop them if they move like us? Think like us?
I glanced out at the audience in the packed stands. They all wore the black leather vests I'd come to associate with biker gangs, but instead of faces they had gleaming human skulls. They laughed and threw money and drank blood from the severed heads of children as they waited for the zombies to tear us to shreds. Sheer horror flooded me as I realized that they were betting on how we would die. I looked up to see several undead clown henchmen holding Felicity's arms and legs, while an evil clown doctor carefully dissected her, handing out her organs like treats to the waiting swarm at ground level.
I turned and watched the skeleton men in the stands exchange bills, some laughing and others shaking their fists in pure anger. They handed each other some small cages with dirty, naked children in them, and passed them back and forth, using the small kids for currency the way a farmer might trade a chicken for groceries.
A loud roar near me pulled my attention back. Felicity was now gone, her torso pulled open and emptied down to bare bones and skin. Next to me, the zombie clown doctor gave a cheerful honk of his horn, holding up a scalpel in the other. I fought with all my might, but cold, wet hands pinned down my arms and legs. I screamed out, but the nightmare doctor only laughed as he brought his arm down and cut into my skin.
A loud whistling object went buzzing past my ear, and the doctor’s face froze in fear. A shiny dart stuck out of his face, showing cheerful red and white plastic wings. The doctor’s face began to melt into soft butter, caving in on itself. Soon he was nothing more than an oily puddle on the ground in front of me. I heard several more darts go flying past me. Soon I was alone, unchained, standing in the middle of the platform in a soft puddle of silky liquid. All around me the skeletons roared their disapproval as I trudged forward toward Felicity's corpse. I reached her and lifted her head like I was pulling a dead petal from a flower.
“Xander,” she said urgently.
“Felicity,” I cried out. “Stay with me, baby. Don't go.”
“Xander,” she said again, more urgently this time. She stared deep into my eyes and I stared back, waiting for her to pass some important final message to me and praying I would know what it meant.
“Wake up.”
“Wake up?” I looked up to see the skeleton men were now closing in on the stage. They were advancing from all sides, angry and screaming with fire blazing within their hollow eye sockets. “What does that mean?”
“Wake up!”
I felt a sharp nudge in the ribs and came to with a start. Felicity was sitting up, dead still, with her head turned toward the front door.
“Someone is out there,” Felicity whispered.
“Are you sure?” I was still trying to shake the dream off of me.
“Positive,” she said. “I could swear I just heard them take out our guards. One minute there was a sort of whizzing sound and the next there were two crashing noises followed by heavy breathing, like snoring but quieter.”
Memories of the whizzing noises I'd heard in my dream floated back to me.
Turns out they really were darts after all, I thought.
“Who would be coming for us?” I wondered out loud. “No one knows we're even here.”
“Except Tank,” Felicity worried. “You heard what John said at dinner. He's not taking any of this well. What if he decided to come in the middle of the night, when no one was looking, and kill us as we try to escape?”
“Sounds like him, if you ask me,” I whispered.
“What are we going to do?” Felicity asked, sounding really scared for the first time.
“Just stay here,” I spoke low, trying to sound confident and in control, when really I was on the verge of freaking out as well. Tank was a nightmare by any standards, but this new version of him, the one John had worked so hard to bring back, well, that Tank was somehow even worse.
I slid out of bed and unsheathed my sword, just as the front door creaked open. A dark shadow flitted through the doorway and into the corner. It moved so fast I barely had time to register that it had happened. I couldn't tell how big it was either.
Great, I thought. He's in total stealth mode. At least if he came at me head-on I'd have a fair chance.
I brought the blade up ready for attack, catching a sliver of moonlight from the high windows. The man stepped out of the shadows and slowly took his hood off. It was Moto.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped, not knowing what to say.
“What does it look like, genius? I'm rescuing you,” Moto said, sounding annoyed at my less than enthusiastic gre
eting. “Now grab Felicity and let's go.”
“We can't leave,” I whispered back in reply. “John already told me that he'd kill Sam…my friend…if I tried to run. He's just a kid, man.”
“We've already grabbed Sam,” Moto assured me. “You're the last item on the list. Now hurry.”
I turned back to see that Felicity was out of bed, and already slipping her shoes back on. I returned my sword to its sheath and quickly pulled my sneakers on, grabbing my ring master coat for warmth.
“Stay right behind me and don't stop,” Moto cautioned us before turning and slinking out the front door.
We crept out the front door and past the two guards, now soundly snoring in front of the building. Moto darted between shadows cast by trees, encouraging us to do the same. We were less than a hundred feet down the hill, heading for the main road, when I first noticed the sound of low moaning all around me. After a moment, I realized it was the wind bringing the chorus of the dead up through camp, the sounds of the growing zombie army below were like a crashing wave of human suffering.
We came to a clearing and Moto just raced through it as fast as he could, trying to balance being in plain sight by not wasting any extra time there. When he was safely tucked back into the spidery shadows of the opposite tree line he beckoned for us, silently commanding that we follow his example once more. Felicity went first and I held my breath, listening for sounds of John's stealth warriors heading in our direction. All I heard was the ragged beating of my own heart.
We've got to make it, I thought. There's no turning back now. Otherwise, who knows what John will do to us all. No, it's full out fight or die time.
Felicity was gesturing to me from the cusp of the gauzy shade cast by the large oak trees. I couldn't see Moto, but I assumed he'd gone on. Her face looked different, concerned in a strange way. I took off as fast as I could, nearly tripping as I raced across the open plain.
Keep your knees up, I told myself. Dig in and give it all you've got.
My heart beat fiercely in my chest. I could hear it thumping in my ears, along with my shallow gasping breaths, as I reached Felicity. She took me in her arms and, looking past her, I saw what had stirred her fear. Tank stood ahead of us, facing off with Moto. Before him, Apache knelt with his hands tied together with string. His right eye was bruised and swelling, but his face revealed no expression of defeat or even self-pity. He just looked like he was calmly biding his time until the situation was rectified, at total peace with it all. Little Sam however, looked like he was on the verge of coming completely unglued. Tank held the small kid by the throat several feet off the ground. Sam's eyes bulged, and his face turned a ripe shade of red as he struggled to free himself from the iron grip of his captor.
“Put him down and I will let you live,” Moto warned him. Tank threw back his head and cackled like a crow.
“You got it all wrong, Big Bro,” Tank sneered. “You take one more step in my direction, and I will pop his head like a grape.”
“I'll cut you in two,” Moto countered, waving his katana menacingly at Tank. “You'll be dead before you hit the earth. This is your last chance, pal. Put him down and walk away.”
“Nice bluff,” Tank chuckled. “We both know that's all it is. You're not going to sacrifice some little snot-nosed kid, and your Indian friend here, on the off chance you might take me out. It's not your style. It doesn't let you look like the big shot hero who saved the day, not when the kid dies no matter what.”
Sam squirmed harder than ever at the news of his impending death, managing to claw just enough air in to bellow out a cry for help.
“Please, Xander,” he brayed in a high-pitched gasp. “Save me!”
Felicity held on tight, but I pulled away from her and started for Tank as I drew my sword.
“Hold up, bro,” Moto cautioned as I reached his side.
“I've got some unfinished business with you,” Tank roared.
“Take it easy, Tank,” I said, my mind racing for an answer.
“Don't tell me to take it easy,” he roared. “I tried to tell John about you. Oh how I've tried. Again and again. He just don't ever want to listen. Thinks he sees a little of himself in you. Thinks you have all this potential, that if he can only get you to see things his way you'll be a great ally to our cause.”
“That's not gonna happen,” I volunteered. “Not ever.”
“I know that,” Tank hissed, annoyed by my interruption. “That's exactly what I explained to him. I tried to tell him that you're a liar, that you'd trick him again, that the only way to deal with you was to torture you for information, then kill you when you begged us for mercy, but he just doesn't get it.”
“Put Sam down, Tank,” I said calmly. “This is between you and me.”
“John likes to talk about the big picture all the time now that he's got his new friends,” Tank said scornfully. “It used to be about chasing scum off our streets, creating a pure neighborhood of white brothers and sisters, and defending our race at all costs.”
“Sounds like a Nazi paradise,” I mocked him. “And you wonder why he's interested in making new friends. Listen to yourself. Racism is so ignorant, so small-minded.”
“The old John would have let me skin you like a stray cat, and hang your carcass up as a warning to the others,” Tank reminisced, a far away look in his glossy black eye. “Now he wants to negotiate and barter and make backroom deals. When I talk about getting justice, he tells me I need to think outside the box. Even after what you did to me, John still can't understand why I need to tear your limbs off and see you suffer.”
“I think you should have stayed dead,” Moto advised.
“You know the problem with keeping your eyes on the future all the time,” Tank said, still smiling his evil, icy grin. “it means you often miss what's right in front of your face. I told John there was no way you accidentally wandered into our hands today, that you were sent here on a mission to see our zombie army in person and report back your findings. He said I was being paranoid, that I wasn't making sense, but here we are on the first night of your capture and you've already got a full rescue team in place.”
Slowly I began to inch forward as Tank spoke, doing my best not to make any noise. Sam's face was now turning purple. He was struggling less as Tank squeezed harder with each sentence, letting his anger build like an old boiler overheating. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Moto was keeping pace with me, shortening the distance between Tank and us, and preparing for an attack.
“I warned John you'd try to escape and to chain you up, but he insisted you wouldn't be a problem. Talk about having the wool pulled over your eyes. All I had to do was sit back and wait by Sam's sleeping quarters. Just like clockwork, your friends here began slinking through the shadows and taking out our posted sentry. They'd have taken a swipe at me too, if I hadn't kept out of sight. So I waited and followed them down here, knowing they'd meet up with you eventually, and here you are.”
“Here I am, Tank,” I said, tightening my grip on my sword. Sam was limp and all but passed out now in Tank's big paw. He didn't have much longer. We had to act soon. I tried to think of what Moto might be planning, how we could strike together and prevent Tank from killing Sam or Apache, but nothing seemed to come to mind.
Why is Apache still smiling? I wondered. It's like he's watching this whole thing unfold, as if it's a movie of the week.
“So how's this for the big picture? I'm going to kill you and your brother tonight,” Tank said.
“Smart move, tough guy,” I shot back. “How do you plan on getting your hands on the Ibogaine after that?”
“John will figure something out. He always does. Sure he'll be mad at first, but then I'll explain how it all went down and that I didn't really have a choice; how it was just me versus your three-man rescue team and I had to fight for my life.”
A loud whizzing sound filled the air. A shiny black dart stuck in the side of Tank's neck with a sickening thump. Almost immediate
ly afterward two more followed, hitting him smack in the chest near his heart. In his surprise, Tank opened his fist and let Sam fall to the ground. Sam crumpled into a pile at the giant man's feet, and remained still and unmoving. Tank looked confused and angry as he ripped the darts out of his chest and threw them on the ground, completely neglecting the one still sticking out of his neck, looking like a bolt on the neck of Frankenstein's monster.
“You son of a...,” was all Tank managed to slur as he stepped forward, his front leg buckling and causing him to topple hard to the ground with a thud.
“Four-man rescue team,” a man corrected, stepping out from behind a cluster of trees. He was dressed like one of John's ninjas, with his mask still on as he approached us. I held my sword up, but Moto lowered his as the man got closer. Apache smiled wider than ever, as if he'd been waiting for this ending all along. The man took off his mask to reveal a familiar face.
“Thanks, Haki,” Moto cheered, taking him by the shoulder and shaking him. “I didn't know if you got my message.”
“I wasn't expecting you to get here so fast,” Haki shrugged. “But it's a good thing you did. Looks like the bikers will be here as early as daybreak. I couldn't stall them any longer. Seems they're all revved up for vengeance and wanna see the kid burn.”
“He's not winning any popularity contests lately,” Moto laughed. “That's for sure. We'll be long gone by then. You just make sure you cover your tracks and don't blow your identity. If John finds out you're working for us there is no telling what he'll do to you.”
“I knew the risks when I volunteered,” Haki said. “I've never let you down, and I won't start now.”
“What about him?” I asked at last, pointing to Tank.
“Leave him,” Moto ordered. “He's out cold anyway. He won't be up for well over six hours, and even then he'll be disoriented. He took a heavy dose.”
“We can't just leave him,” Felicity begged, looking around wildly. “He's going to keep trying to track us down and kill us. Besides, won't he know you're a double agent?”
Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 53