by Snell, D. L.
“He can’t hear you,” Donovan said.
“Tranqs?”
Donovan nodded. “He became irrational in the exam room, and if Theta Kristos hadn’t been there to hold him back, who knows?” He sidled in closer to the Alpha. “I know this is all very sudden, but a decision has to be made. Now.”
Alpha McLoughlin looked down at Donovan. “What are you planning, Doctor? He’s isolated. That much is certain. Dr. Crispin factored in our abilities when he built the sparring cage.” He bunched his hand into a fist and hit one of the beams that supported the fence. “Even me. In full Change, on amphetamines and adrenaline, there’s no way I could get out of this cage.”
Rubbing his temples again, Donovan closed his eyes. “I understand that. I do. The thing is, Alpha, we have a population of survivors who have also just been screened, and they’ve been split yet again. A great many of them have gone into extra quarantine, and we can’t be seen favoring the Dogs.
“Samson is a special case. This may sound callous to you, but as a scientist, I would like to study him as the bite takes effect.”
McLoughlin’s face clouded over.
“But I’m not going to favor him. I can’t.” Donovan looked back over his shoulder at the large quarantine area, just within sight of the sparring cage. “These people are us now. They are us. And we have to apply everything equally. Samson is effectively quarantined, yes, but we sent all the others into the kennels underground. Samson will have to be in isolation there, too.”
“Yes, sir,” McLoughlin said. “I’ll move him. He’s part of my pack, and I’m responsible for this.”
Donovan stood back while the Alpha opened the cage. As the larger man stepped inside, Donovan scurried forward and closed the door behind him, locking it.
“Just a precaution,” he said. “We don’t know how long the tranquilizers will last, remember? When you’re ready to carry him out, I’ll open the gate.”
Mac looked down at Samson, whose eyes were open.
Barely suppressing the glee in his voice, Donovan said, “The other option is to kill him.”
McLoughlin turned to face the neurotechnician.
“I won’t do that.”
Donovan laced his fingers into the fence. “Do I have to make it an order, Alpha McLoughlin? Do I have to remind you that I am now in charge?”
The Alpha simply crossed his arms and glared at him.
“Fine,” the new project director said. “Alpha McLoughlin, I order you to kill Beta Samson.”
“I won’t.”
Samson rose up behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KEN SAT WITH HIS BACK against a brick wall, holding the big .44 to the side of his face, wishing he had more ammunition. He already regretted telling Kelly he would get a bus “or die trying.” If he was being honest with himself, he’d felt a little like dying when he left. Taking care of the people who’d been bitten...
He shook his head.
Already, he was seven blocks from North Regional with nothing to pay off. No bus, no guns, no ammo. Just lots and lots of dead people, up and walking around. Waiting for him to screw up so they could eat.
He risked a quick glance around the corner. The parking lot of the gas station was almost empty. Only one or two zombies wandered around there. Ken laughed out of his nose.
I guess the rest of them got bored.
What he really wanted right then was to get into the gas station and find a city map. Maybe then he could find a school. He knew from driving through morning traffic that there was a bus depot in the area somewhere. He just had to find it.
There was also a Greyhound station, but that was farther into town than he wanted to go. Ken suspected that the closer he got to downtown, the denser the bodies would be. And the gridlock. He had a brief vision of himself as Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet. Smiling, he dismissed that. Julius may have been a wiz, but Ken thought TIG welding might be outside of the old man’s area of expertise.
He looked around the corner again and saw that the zombies were both facing opposite directions. He took a series of quick breaths and hoped he wouldn’t have to pull the trigger on either of them. It wasn’t them he cared about; it was the noise.
Like a bear, Ken lumbered around the corner and started running. His arms and legs pumped, propelling him across the parking lot in relative silence, only the slap, slap, slap of his shoes giving him away.
It was enough. The dead, both of them, turned to look. By the time they got turned around, though, he was already past them and around the corner of the convenience store.
Ken smiled grimly and holstered his revolver. There on the ground was a baseball bat, blood and hair all over the business end. Whoever had dropped it might not have made it, but Ken decided the bat would be much better than the .44, as far as stealth went.
He jumped back around the corner of the convenience store and swung the bat. The heavy end struck one zombie’s skull with a loud crack, and the dead man in the nurse’s uniform went down. Ken turned and saw the other zombie, wearing the bottom half of a firefighter’s outfit. The corpse’s jaws opened as it bore down on him, and he jumped at it, swinging the bat in an overhand smash that shut it up forever.
This again.
He stood over the corpse, wondering whether he was looking at an ex-male stripper. Wiping the bat on the rough fabric of the dead man’s pants, he decided he didn’t care. He couldn’t afford to care.
Ken turned to the convenience store and hoped the door wasn’t locked. Glancing around, he walked over and put out a hand, then sighed when the door opened to his slight pull.
As the door closed behind him, he surveyed the inside of the store, all senses on alert. Even though he was certain the store was vacant, he was past taking chances. No matter how he’d felt about himself at the beginning of the day—
The axe head came down, over and over.
—now he was on a mission for everybody else. The people at North Regional were counting on him. And he would not let himself get killed, because any oversight or stupidity would essentially get them killed too.
The aisles of the store were clear, and the door leading to the storage area was closed. He jogged back there and twisted the knob: locked.
“Good,” he said.
Back at the front of the store, he rifled through the area maps, looking for one that was less generic. He found one geared towards tourists and smiled, thankful again that his group had chosen to hole up on the outskirts of town.
Unfolding the map, he smoothed it out on the counter and found the gas station.
“Marker,” he said, and turned to look for one. He found one, and also snagged some high-protein bars and two tiny energy drinks.
At the counter again, he marked the intersection next to the convenience store, circled the North Regional building, and started looking for someplace he could snatch a bus from. Chewing on a runner’s snack, he kept an eye open for places to migrate to as well. Julius had been helpful there, informing the group of a machine shop that wasn’t too far. Someplace like that, the doors would be heavy and the locks would be stout. Plus, there would be plenty of tools they could use as bludgeons, if they had to.
Ken stabbed a blunt finger down on the map. “There you are.”
He noted the cross streets and then folded the map, jamming it into the back pocket of his jeans. Turning to leave the store, he had a thought.
Behind the counter, someone had left quite a mess, stuff thrown off one of the shelves. On the clear spot of the lowest shelf, Ken spotted a small black box.
Smiling, he opened it and found a short Walther PPK .32 automatic, fully loaded, along with an extra magazine full of bullets.
Two magazines. Beautiful.
He moved the stuff on the shelf some more, hoping to find a box of bullets, but his good fortune had come to an end.
He went to the front doors and closed his eyes. Eight blocks to go. Could he do it at a dead run? Already, just from the single sna
ck bar, he felt better. Quickly, he downed one of the energy drinks and stretched.
Probably look ridiculous, like a lumberjack doing yoga.
Ken pushed the door open and started off with a light jog. Twelve steps from the store, he heard a moan behind him. Still jogging, he turned to look, and there was the rest of the party that had left the parking lot earlier.
The zombies had returned.
Ken ran a little faster, but then stopped. As long as it was just that group, he only had to stay ahead of the pack. No need to burn himself out right away.
As he crossed the first intersection, another moan started on his left. He grimaced, but didn’t bother to look. He wasn’t going that way, so it didn’t matter.
In front of him, a pair of zombies in his-and-hers clown suits staggered into the intersection and turned to face him. The man’s wig had slipped off, revealing matted brown hair, and old streaks of blood that ran down and ruined his makeup. The woman still wore her wig, but instead of a red clown nose, she had just a hole in her face.
They, too, began to moan.
“I hate clowns!” Ken roared, raising the bat and scything it through the air. It caught the man and forced him sideways into his sidekick, knocking both of the clowns off-balance. Ken kept on running, reining in his desire to stop and pummel them until they shut up.
He really did hate clowns.
He reached the third intersection and turned left, only to pull up short. From curb to curb, dead folk of all shapes and sizes turned, alerted to food by the moans that haunted Ken. He looked around, wondering just what he was going to do now.
The street sloped down away from him, and he knew if he got past this knot of zombies, he’d be all right for a while; past this residential neighborhood there was a park.
A big white Ford truck sat at the top of the hill. Ken smiled. The driver, whoever he or she was, knew a good truck, but didn’t know shit about parking on an incline. The wheels were turned out instead of in. Running to the truck, he peered in through the glass, confirming it was a stick shift. He raised the bat and smashed open the window.
Zombies were closing in, from behind and in front. Ken got into the truck and scooted over, leaning down and away from the window. He poked his head up over the dash, waiting for the dead to get a little closer up the hill, but not too close. Too close, and the truck wouldn’t build any momentum.
Now.
He released the emergency brake, and immediately the truck began to roll away from the curb. Ken hooted as it made its first impact, then it was all rumbling and moaning and arms reaching in through the busted window as the truck plowed through the rows of zombies. The shuddering stopped, and Ken looked up—his face bounced off the dashboard as the truck rammed into a four-door Lincoln across the street.
Popping the door open, Ken leapt free of the truck and started swinging the bat. He’d cut a diagonal path through the thickest part of the zombies, but he was still surrounded. The bat cracked from skull to skull, smashing down on arms and shoulders.
Grinning, he decided that breaking collarbones was just as good as anything else. It kept them from reaching out and grabbing at least.
He hopped up on the roof of the Lincoln, then ran over the top of the car and leapt onto the top of the van parked behind it. He kept running, jumping off the back end of the van and landing awkwardly against a blue U.S. mailbox. Something in his knee protested, and he hobbled away, still four blocks from the bus depot.
The zombie mass staggered after him, their unending moan setting his teeth on edge. He limped as fast as he could, each step a bit of agony in his leg.
“Aspirin. Ibuprofin. No, I got energy drinks, bah!”
Hobbled the way he was, Ken wasn’t gaining any ground ahead of the horde. It was a case of the tortoise and the hare anymore. He had to keep moving.
Ken cracked open another energy drink and sucked the bitter liquid down.
At the next intersection, he veered right, glimpsing the park. He breathed a sigh of thanks; the place was empty and green, and if he hadn’t had a bad wheel, he might have stopped to enjoy a moment of peace and sun.
He noticed, idly, that he was breathing pretty hard through his mouth. He closed it to swallow, and found his mouth full of blood. He spit and put a hand to his nose; it was mashed down and to the side.
Looking behind him, he saw the zombies just a touch farther away. Maybe.
He stopped and dug the marker out of his pocket, then jammed the end of it into his nose. He took a couple of deep breaths and yanked it sideways, setting the cartilage with a crispy, crunchy noise. A groan forced its way out through his gritted teeth, and he kept moving.
He spit blood again.
I got to stop this nosebleed.
But he kept moving instead, now only two blocks from the school he’d marked on the map. As he cleared the end of the park, the entrance came into view, and Ken’s face broke into a wide smile as he saw three school busses sitting there.
A thumping sound from the school killed the smile.
He looked, and in each window along the side of the long building, there were children, looking dead and a little chewed-on, smacking at the glass of the windows with the flats of their little hands. Ken turned away, gulping another mouthful of blood.
The thick metallic taste was starting to make him nauseous.
He came to the first bus and pushed open the door. A stench wafted out at him, weeks of decay and dry rot, and the driver hauled himself up in the rear seat of the bus. Ken went up the stairs and took a second to close the door behind him, then turned down the aisle with the automatic .32 in his hand. He pulled the trigger once, and the sound and the recoil and the new smell of cordite released a flood of anger in him. He kept pulling the trigger, making the corpse of the driver dance before the slide locked back.
Dragging the thing to the emergency exit, he tore the key ring from the driver’s belt before popping the back door open and dumping the body outside. The horde was right behind the bus, and he shouted, spraying blood off his lips.
“Go away! Just get the fuck away from me!”
Hobbling to the front of the bus, he found himself crying.
The kids.
He plopped down in the driver’s seat and started the engine, then put the bus into drive and pulled away, leaving the mass of undead behind him. The bus lumbered into the street, and he headed back to North Regional. Fifteen short blocks.
As he turned onto the avenue where the big building squatted, his heart sank.
Even more dead had gathered out front. They were spilling out of the lobby.
Ken stopped the bus and stared. The top of his building was belching smoke.
He checked the rearview mirror, seeing the pair of clowns round the corner, followed by a different mass of zombies.
Clowns.
Kids.
Ken sneezed blood and wiped at his eyes.
Up on the second floor of the North Regional building, he could see Kelly behind the window, pointing down at the bus and yelling something. A desk came sailing through the glass, and its drawers opened, scattering papers and pens and a family photo. The desk landed on a bug-eyed zombie down below.
Ken leaned out the window. “Well, come on, then!” he shouted up at his people.
He reloaded the .32, picked up his .44, and opened the bus door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ALPHA MCLOUGHLIN CAUGHT Samson’s wrists as the Beta’s hands shot for his throat. McLoughlin twisted, turning the Dog’s momentum away before jamming an elbow into Samson’s armpit to push him off.
“Stand down!” he shouted.
Samson staggered away but stopped himself from slamming into the cage. He craned his head around to stare at Mac. The Beta’s upper lip twitched, but he said nothing. Instead, he turned, keeping in contact with the fence. His stare emptied of emotion.
McLoughlin took a step back. “Look, whatever it is, we should just hold tight, ride it out. If you got bit...
Sam, if you got bit, why didn’t you say anything?”
Samson didn’t respond. He just leaned forward, drooling, sneering, showing bloodstained teeth.
“Did you?” Mac said. “When you went to clear the pier, did one of them get you?”
“Stop stalling,” Donovan said. “I gave you an order, Alpha.”
McLoughlin turned to shut the director up, but then saw the rest of the Dogs arrayed behind Donovan, their faces blank. All of them were watching, totally invested in whatever happened next.
McLoughlin knew what they were thinking.
What if it were me in there?
“If you got bit, Sam, I don’t know what will happen. Maybe our systems can fight it off. But this? This won’t fix anything.”
Samson burst away from the fence, flinging himself headlong at McLoughlin, who caught the charge and threw him over his hip. The Beta landed hard on the concrete floor of the sparring cage, not even rolling to absorb the impact. Instead, he landed face-first, bouncing off his chest. Only then did he roll over. The wind had been knocked out of him, but he got up anyway.
Backing to the center of the cage, McLoughlin held his hands in front of him, keeping an eye on Samson. “Stay back.” Mac stopped in the middle of the sparring area. “I’m not going to hurt you, Sam, but you have to stay back.” He tried to laugh but couldn’t, finding his throat too dry. “Come on. We both know how this goes. You’re going to sleep.”
One side of Samson’s mouth twitched in a short-lived smile, and he crouched down, advancing and circling to the right. He rushed in, swiping a hand at McLoughlin’s legs, then backing out. The Alpha fell for the feint and dropped his hands—Samson lunged. Together, they fell to the ground.
McLoughlin kicked his legs up, holding Samson’s hips in a guard. He kept having to move his head as Samson’s jaws came down, biting.
Working his arms free, McLoughlin grabbed Samson’s left wrist and shifted his hips, moving his legs up until he was high enough to slip sideways and wrap his right leg over Samson’s face, pulling the Beta Dog down into an arm bar. He pulled; their jiu-jitsu sessions always ended this way, with Samson in a submission hold and tapping out.