Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Devan Sagliani

  “This is insane,” I said, shaking my head. “You've completely lost your mind, bro.”

  “I don't have to listen to this garbage any more,” Benji shouted in my face. “I should have known you were trouble back at Vandenberg, when you stole several of my comics and then sold them to Weasel and his buddies.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?!”

  Indignation fired through me. Was I dreaming? I couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.

  “Don't try to deny it,” Benji scoffed. “I know the truth. You've always cared only about yourself. You tried to pretend that you were helping the rest of us out, but really we were just there to be used by you to help get you back here to carry out your deranged terrorist plot. You manipulated me because I was just a kid, but those days are over. Tomorrow morning you're going to finally get what you deserve, and when you do, I'll be there front and center to watch it. I'm looking forward to it.”

  My mouth fell open again in shock, as once more I found myself overcome with emotion and unable to speak. My heart felt like it was breaking in my chest. Not only had Franco turned Benji against me, he'd done such a good job at it that the kid I used to think of like a younger brother was now excitedly awaiting my execution. It was more than I could bear.

  “Get him out of here,” Benji said. “I can't stand to look at him anymore.”

  Moto was quiet as they led us back to our cell and locked us in. Neither of us spoke. It wasn't long before another group of Blackshirts arrived to take Moto away again.

  “Where are you taking him?” I demanded. “Franco said we were to be left alone. You can't do this!”

  I stood up to fight, but Moto just shook his head.

  “Save your strength,” he said. “You're gonna need it. I'm sure I'll be back soon.”

  I watched as they bound his hands, and then pushed him along. When he was gone and I was alone, I slumped back to the cold floor and covered my face with my hands. I was overcome with the desire to cry, but I fought it off. Fear and frustration scrambled my thoughts.

  What was Benji talking about? I wondered. Why did he think I'd stolen from him? Didn't he remember the truth anymore? That I saved him from Weasel? Maybe Franco has invented some kind of mind control serum as well. That must be it!

  Still, it hurt to think of all the nasty comments Benji had hurled at me only moments before.

  What does it matter now? I thought. There's no way either of us is ever going to talk, no matter what they threaten us with. Franco will hang us in the morning when we don't. One way or another, I'll be dead soon.

  I felt a weariness come over me, pulling me down into a dark place in my thoughts. I closed my eyes, and tried to think of Felicity's face. I imagined her smile, and dreamed of her gentle touch. If I was going to die, I wanted to use my last moments of life to remember all that truly mattered to me. I drifted off dreaming I was back in bed with her in Xanadu, that I'd never gone with Moto, and that there was still time to fix everything that was wrong with the world.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke up in time to see Moto being forced back into the cage with me. I heard the door slam shut and the metal lock snap loudly into place. I looked to see who had brought him back, hoping it might be Benji, that I could get a moment alone with him to ask him why he was acting so strange, but the Blackshirt was already gone by the time I'd gotten to my feet. Moto moaned in pain as he crashed to the cell floor in a heap.

  I've got to help my brother right now, I thought. I can worry about getting to the bottom of things later.

  Moto came back to the cell worse for wear, much worse in fact. Both eyes were swollen, and his nose was visibly broken. Blood poured freely from a wound over his right eye. He looked weaker, worn down by the struggle, but still unbroken.

  “What did they do to you?” I asked in horror.

  “Trust me,” he wheezed, fighting to catch his breath. “You don't really wanna know.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Not a thing,” Moto smiled. From the look on his face I could see he was telling the truth.

  “Good,” I said. “The longer you hold out, the more likely they'll cancel our execution,” I gulped. “Or at least postpone it. I mean, it's not like they can kill you until you've told them what they need to know. Once you do that, I have a feeling Tank will just come in and start pulling me apart like an unattended dog with a sofa cushion.”

  “You remember when the neighbor’s dog did that?”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “That's what made me think of it.”

  “What was the name of that dog?”

  “Sandy,” I offered. “She was a Golden Retriever.”

  “Right,” Moto laughed, trying to fight off the fear that had settled over both of us, as the hour of our hanging approached. “And what were the neighbor’s names again?”

  “I don't remember,” I admitted. “One of them was named Fred, I think.”

  “Amazing isn't it? That you can remember the name of the dog, but not the person who owned it.”

  “How can I ever forget the name of that dog? We were out in the street playing Nerf football when the front door came flying open, and out comes Sandy with the sofa cushion still in her mouth.”

  “And the guy,” Moto began.

  “Fred,” I added.

  “Yeah, so then Fred starts chasing the dog all over the front lawn with a rolled up newspaper, yelling at the top of his lungs like some kind of maniac,” Moto laughed.

  “Bad Sandy! Down Sandy! Heel Sandy!” I got up and did an impersonation of our old neighbor, waving my arms around and making crazy faces. Moto howled with laughter. It felt good to be able to give him some kind of happiness, to take both our minds off of the situation for just a moment.

  “I never told you, but dad said that guy came over after I moved in with you,” Moto admitted.

  “Fred?”

  “If that was his name,” Moto continued. “I guess he asked dad a ton of questions about me, said he was worried I might try to barbeque his dog because that's what Asians did.”

  “Are you serious? He said that?”

  “Yeah,” Moto laughed. “Dad explained that Japanese people don't do that and that it was a myth anyway, but he told me to steer clear of the guy after that.”

  “I never knew that.” I was honestly surprised by how racist our kooky old neighbor secretly was. “I bet he was wishing you'd have turned poor old Sandy into a side of teriyaki ribs that day!”

  “I used to want to mess with him so bad,” Moto admitted. “I thought about leaving a bag of charcoal briquettes on his front porch and a bottle of BBQ sauce, but I never went through with it.”

  “Funny thing is, Fred would probably eat that dog himself now,” I pointed out. Moto nodded his head, lost in thought. We sat in silence for a moment before he spoke again.

  “I've got a guy on the inside who can get word out to Sonya,” Moto whispered. “Just hang in there, and our rescue party will come and save us.”

  “I hope you're right,” I answered grimly. I could already feel the noose around my neck.

  “Hold up,” Moto whispered. “Someone is coming.”

  From out of the darkness, Tank walked a beat-up-looking old man in a white lab coat in our direction. He stopped and opened the cage door, roughly shoving the man inside.

  “Brought you some company, runt,” he growled, locking eyes with me. He shut the door and bolted us in again. “Maybe you can entertain him with some of your made-up stories about what a hero you think you are.”

  “You seem to be in a good mood,” I lashed out. “For a guy whose best friend has thrown him aside for his new pals. Guess you can't blame them really, seeing as how you're not entirely trustworthy.”

  “I am in a good mood,” Tank smiled. “Because in just over an hour, when the sun comes up, I'm going to get to see you hang from the neck until you mess your britches and die. You could say one of my dreams is coming true. Oh sure, it's
not the same as getting to do it myself, but it's still gonna be pretty darn satisfying to watch you kick and gasp and fight for life, only to fail and go limp and die.”

  I didn't have a good comeback for that. Instead, my mouth went dry and electric fear began to climb from the base of my spine upward, causing all the hairs on my arms to stand on end.

  “I'll get to see every last second of it from the moment you drop to the instant the light goes out of your eyes,” he said greedily. “I'll be right up front, so the last thing you'll see is me taking pleasure in your demise.”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out in reply.

  “I don't know if you know much about hanging a person,” Tank said nonchalantly. “It's not done regularly anymore, but it used to be an art form before it went out of fashion. You see, you've got to get the drop just right, to use just the right length of rope, otherwise the neck won't break. Instead, the condemned man will just kick and struggle, suffocating slowly in agonizing pain. At that point, the only thing you can do for them is pull them down by the legs to try to speed up the process. Back in the days of segregation, there were guys who were so skilled at determining the precise amount of rope to use they could hang a man over a tree branch or lamppost. Got to the point in the South, you couldn't walk down the street without seeing a man lynched for not knowing his place. Now I'd imagine there isn't one in a hundred with that talent. Chew on that for a while, sport.”

  Tank turned and slowly walked away, whistling a happy tune as he went, while my imagination began to run wild with all the horrible things that could go wrong in the next few hours. There was a very real possibility we'd both be dead soon. The old man’s coughing brought me out of my stupor.

  “Who is this guy?” I asked.

  “He's the one we came to find,” Moto answered, looking suddenly optimistic. “This is Dr. Winterbourne.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” he croaked, coughing loudly again.

  “Okay,” I said, ignoring the man and turning to Moto. “And why is he locked in the prison cage with us now?”

  “That's a good question,” Moto replied. “Care to shed some light on that one, Doc?”

  “I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you,” he replied dourly.

  “Amazing! More bad news,” I laughed. I felt like my mind was already on the verge of snapping, and anything worse might just push me over the edge. “That's great. Just what we needed in our final moments.”

  “I'm sorry, young man,” Dr. Winterbourne sputtered in between coughing jags. “But I don't have much time left now either.”

  “What's wrong with you?” I asked.

  “I'm dying,” he confessed. “Thank God. It's almost over now.”

  “I don't understand,” I was shaking my head in confusion.

  “You're not making any sense, Doc,” Moto joined in.

  “It is what I deserve, just as Dr. Frankenstein deserved to be killed by his monster,” Winterbourne said in a low, pitiful voice. “It would seem, like the mad doctor, I too, will be taken by illness before the creature can take its deserved revenge. At least this way I can't do any more harm.”

  “He's delirious,” Moto said. “He looks like he's burning up with fever.”

  Sure enough, there were beads of perspiration forming on his brow as he spoke, and his eyes looked glassy and bloodshot.

  “What happened to Dr. G?” I asked. “Maybe he can help you?”

  “I'm afraid Dr. G won't be helping anyone anymore,” Winterbourne explained. “Seeing as how he accidentally locked himself in the viewing chamber with your friend, Haki, shortly after you left.”

  “Franco killed him?” Moto asked. “Why?”

  “Actually, I was the one who did it,” Winterbourne confessed. “He was a terrible man, a murderer who delighted in torturing others. He got a fraction of what he truly deserved. It was over far too fast, if you ask me. But Franco didn't seem the least bit concerned that his old pal from back in the CIA days was no longer with us. By the look on his face you'd think he was actually relieved.”

  “So you killed him because he was evil?”

  “No,” Winterbourne admitted. “I did it to slow Franco down. You see, the doctor knew that I was lying. Franco had no idea if I was headed in the wrong direction, but Dr. G did. It was for that very reason that the work on the new serum developed so rapidly. You saw what it did to Haki. I am the one responsible for that. Now all Franco needs to complete his diabolic plan is the antidote. Once he has it, he will be virtually unstoppable. So you see, I had to take out Dr. G.”

  “Won't he just use the batches of super serum he already has?” I asked.

  “He may,” Winterbourne said, “but they will be the last he'll ever get his hands on. It's a complicated formula, not unlike the antidote. Easy to screw up. Unstable. The results often unpredictable. Without someone of my background, it will be nearly impossible to reproduce.”

  “What background?” I asked.

  “I was a theoretical scientist,” he murmured. “Do you know what that means?”

  “No,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  “It means I primarily worked in an office,” he patiently explained, “not a lab setting. You see, it was my job to dream up things like killer viruses, to conceptualize what they might look like. It was never my job to design or create them, though admittedly I understood that my theoretical constructs could be reverse-engineered to synthesize a weapon. After all, I worked for the National Security Agency. All my funding came out of defense spending. All my work was highly classified.”

  “So you didn't think when you made the zombie virus that you were designing a weapon?” I asked, trying not to sound as judgmental as I felt.

  How could a person do that? I wondered. How could they separate dreaming up an end-of-the-world extinction-level-event super bug and seeing it unleashed on the planet.

  “Honestly,” he said, looking up at me with pleading eyes. “No. I didn't at first. The idea seemed completely implausible, given the consequences. There'd be no way to stop it, to shut it off. I just assumed I was making the ultimate deterrent to war, like Oppenheimer.”

  “Except the atomic bomb was used against actual people,” Moto reminded him. “And so was your zombie virus.”

  “You sound like the men who came and took me,” he offered in a sad voice.

  “So if you're all he's got left,” I exclaimed, “why is Franco beating up on you? I don't get it.”

  “He's mad,” the doctor declared. “He knows I've been stalling on him. He wants me to help him develop a new antidote that doesn't require Ibogaine, but I've told him I can't.”

  “But you can, right? I mean, after all, the zombie virus is your baby. You know all about it.”

  “That's just it. I am the father of the plague that wiped humanity off the map, but I'm not the one who put it together. Viruses are tricky work because of the way they mutate. My work was like a blueprint, but only a skilled architect could put it together in a lab. There were other men who took the horror I dreamed up and gave it birth. Without their notes, I'm about as helpful as an elderly university professor lecturing on the subject for midterms.”

  “So why did they single you out?” I asked. “If you can't make it, why did they drag you here?”

  “And how did they find you?” Moto added, looking suspiciously at him.

  “Franco was one of my handlers,” Winterbourne said. “He knew exactly where I'd be. He came and brought me back at gunpoint on Z Day.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “You knew him before all this happened?”

  “Yes,” Winterbourne confirmed, nodding his head and setting off another round of harsh coughing. “He worked for an intelligence agency in Washington with access to the project. In fact, his boss was the one who recruited me.”

  “For all we know, he's been planning this a long time,” Moto said.

  “I told him I couldn't make a new version of the antidote, that it would take years and a full t
eam to create something like that, but he just wouldn't listen,” the doctor explained. “He brought me to this hellhole, and began showing me all his big plans to reshape the world. He's gone mad with dreams of power and glory. I can't be part of this. It's already horrible beyond words what I've done.”

  “So you're not going to help him? That's why he threw you in with us,” I stated.

  “What he doesn't realize is the role the drug plays in the process, not only physically in numbing the pain of regeneration, but also psychologically.”

  “Why does that even matter?” Moto asked.

  “Ah yes,” the doctor said with a wistful smile, “the power of the mind. A wise man once said that in actuality all things are created by the mind. Science doesn't really understand it yet. You see the mind is a constantly changing shapeless construct. Unlike the organic matter of the brain the mind cannot be observed, but it's crucial to our existence in ways we can't begin to comprehend. Studies have shown that the mind plays a key role in our body's ability to heal itself.”

  “You mean you have to believe you're going to get better to heal?” Moto asked.

  “Precisely,” the doctor smiled like he was rewarding an apt pupil. “If you believe you are sick, you become sick. If you believe you will heal faster, you do. That's why they say laughter is the best medicine, although I'd still also take your antibiotics in most cases.”

  “So how does Ibogaine fit in?”

  “The drug is a powerful hallucinogenic,” Winterbourne explained. “It's capable of effectively rewiring the brain, allowing users to essentially wipe out past trauma and come to peace.”

  “Is that why I saw people who had died when I was on it?” I questioned the doctor.

  “Yes. That's exactly it. You had suffered a terrifying experience, come within inches of death and had your body taken over by an unstoppable disease. In your shock you retreated into a space within your mind to protect yourself, like hiding behind a locked door. Ibogaine doesn't just unlock all the doors of the mind, it melts them away, along with walls and any other obstructions.”