by Snell, D. L.
The pastor huffed after the group, already speaking words of comfort to people afraid for their families on the island.
“North Regional was a great place,” Kelly said. “But if you knew the way in and out, and you weren’t afraid of dying, you could ruin everything. For everybody.” She looked up at Ken. “Did you know Jimmy had a girlfriend?”
He stood up straighter. He’d never considered the thought that his red-headed lieutenant would have somebody.
“Me, neither,” Kelly said. “She was a little brunette number. Apparently, when Jimmy went to the island with the Dogs without her, she had some kind of breakdown or something.” Kelly shook her head. “Before, when everybody was in line to get on the radio, she was convinced he was dead. So while all eyes were topside, she went downstairs and made her deal with the devil.”
“What a bitch,” Mac said.
“Did she ever talk to the pastor?” Ken asked.
Kelly wrinkled her nose. “The pastor is kind of an a-hole.”
“Been my experience.”
“Anyway. She didn’t take it so well that, one, we repelled the zombies and, two, Jimmy was actually still alive. So while you were off getting the bus, in a fit of guilt-induced depression, she lit herself on fire.”
“On fire,” Ken said.
“In the quarters. Yeah. Londy and Clint were on the way down from the roof when they smelled the smoke—”
“And they tried to put her out,” Ken said, sitting back down.
“—and they tried to put her out, yes. They didn’t make it. And they also had the other two nines.”
“That settles it,” Ken said. “Next time we raid a drugstore, I’m looking for anti-depressants.”
“She’s dead,” Kelly said.
“I meant for me.”
Mac snorted a laugh. Ken and Kelly both looked over at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I meant to laugh.”
“Everybody’s settled in upstairs,” Julius said, wiping his hands on a rag. “How are we getting along down here?”
“We’re okay, I think,” Ken said. “This is quite a place you have here, Julius.”
The old man looked embarrassed. “Aw, shucks. This old place ain’t nothing.”
He turned, taking the shop in as if seeing it with new eyes. Thick wooden workbenches with nicked and scarred tops lined one side of the room; the wall above was painted a light blue and stenciled with red outlines where tools hung. A great many of them were still in place; only three or four red shapes stood out. Along the adjacent wall, opposite the great roll-up door, stood red and black toolboxes. Near the wall opposite the workbenches were a hydraulic press, a pipe bender, a drill press, and a hose press. On the wall itself were rows and rows of bins, full of parts.
“It’s very clean,” Mac said.
“Yeah, well. Two months ago, the bank was all set to foreclose on me, and I made the place up nice to attract buyers.”
“Did you find one?” Kelly asked.
Julius turned back to them, a smile on his face and tears standing in his eyes. “Nope. And then I didn’t need one.”
Ken whistled. “Imagine what we could do to that bus if we had power here.”
Julius raised an eyebrow. “You want power? We can have power. The place next door has an emergency generator.”
Kelly perked up. “We could have light! And music.”
“That would be nice,” Ken agreed. “Some long-lost creature comforts to take everyone’s minds off the new regime on the island. What about the noise? Do you think we’ll attract too many visitors?”
Mac shook his head. “No. While you were being tended to, I was scouting around. The buildings on this whole block are all close together. We need to go anywhere, we can head away by rooftop. So maybe the more visitors at the front door, the better. Concentrate them here—”
“And you know where they all are,” Ken finished. “That’s not bad.” He leaned back onto a large covered object behind his stool. “So, if we have all of this at our disposal, what are we going to do?”
Julius stuffed the rag in his back pocket. “What do you mean?”
Ken ran his hands through his hair. “We can’t just sit all comfy and pretty here while shit’s going all crazy over there. We have families to put back together. Maybe the island is nice, even with a crazy dictator. But from what Mac has said, it’s not the place for us.”
He stood, testing his ankle again.
“So, the question remains. What are we going to do?”
Mac looked at Ken and raised his eyebrows. “How many men do you have who can shoot? Or, I guess, would be willing to?”
Jerking a thumb upwards, Ken said, “Every father up there will pull the trigger. That’s how they made it to North Regional.”
“Different,” Mac said. “That was all dead people they were shooting at. Now they’ll have live ones shooting back. And the Dogs.”
Ken thought about going toe-to-toe with one of the beasts. “Okay, so a full-frontal assault is out.”
“We need to get over there first,” Mac said. “The marina is our gateway. Unfortunately, they know this. The entire perimeter of the island is lined with sonar arrays. They have radar. They have cameras. The security chief is very thorough.”
“You know him pretty well?” Kelly asked.
Mac smiled. “Yeah. He was the first person I talked to that wasn’t a scientist after I became a Dog. If I could find a way to talk to him...”
“We have a radio,” Julius said. “Maybe if you called—”
“No. That’s no good. If I know Donovan, and I can say that I do now, he’s taken up residence in Dr. Crispin’s old offices. Before all this, Crispin had linked all the radio and comms to his computer, recorded twenty-four seven.”
Kelly slumped against the hydraulic press. “So if you make a call, even if you get to talk to...”
“Jaden,” Mac said.
“To Jaden, Donovan will know what’s coming.”
“And he’ll be ready, with or without Jaden. He’s already got the Sigma Dogs at his beck and call, and I don’t think it’ll be too much longer before the Theta Dogs come around.”
Mac stopped talking, taking in the lost looks on their faces. “Right. There are five ranks. I was the Alpha. Samson was my Beta. Kaiser was the new Epsilon. There were five other Thetas, but Dunne is dead. And there were six Sigmas, one for each Theta. Now there is one less.”
“The Dog at the bus?” Ken said.
“Yeah. So, here’s what I think. I can talk to Jaden. I can. I just have to word things so he’ll understand what I mean and Donovan won’t. And if we make it across the water, I can draw the Dogs away, I think.”
“I’m already brimming with confidence,” Julius said.
Mac waved his hand. “I know. These are just the quick and dirty details. The big thing will be getting a boat over there large enough so that all the survivors will fit. Not just your group; there was another group we picked up before we found you guys. And there’s island staff who might want to leave.
“The original quarantine area isn’t far from the pier. Then again, neither are the Dog barracks. And about half of the survivors were being moved from normal quarantine to someplace else, someplace underground. I bet it’s the Kennel, but we need intel.”
“How about a diversion?” Ken said. “There are enough of us that we could take two boats.”
Mac snapped his fingers. “That might be what we’re looking for. We take two boats out of the marina. We can run one right at the pier and trick the security team to concentrate on it.”
“While we run another one up to the back of the island, all nice and quiet-like,” Julius said. “How far will we be from the quarantine area? And the underground?”
“Not far, really,” Mac said, shaking his head. “We’ll have to be quiet about it, because the island isn’t that big. If the security team gets an inkling that they’re shooting at the wrong thing, it won’t take them long to get
turned around and aimed at something else.”
“We’re going to need guns,” Ken said. “And ammo. And gas.”
Mac laughed and slapped Ken’s shoulder. “Those are just the little details. The big picture stuff, like two boats? That’s what we need to focus on now.”
Julius stood. “All right, commandos. I’m going to take one of the men from upstairs and get some wiring from next door before it gets too late and too dark.”
Kelly watched the older man amble away. “He really is a genius. Too bad about his shop, though.”
Ken laughed. “Are you kidding? If the end of the world hadn’t come along, he might have lost everything. He’s too old to start over.”
“Let me see that map,” Mac said. He took the folded-up paper from Ken’s outstretched hand, then walked over and smoothed it out on the workbench. He rummaged around in the bins for a moment, then came back with four nails. With a hammer, Mac fastened the map to the workbench.
“Marker,” he said.
Once Ken passed that over, too, Mac had the cap in his teeth and was drawing a shape on the workbench. “This is the island. We can plan our assault like so...”
He squinted. The marker stopped moving.
“Well. There is one thing we probably have to handle first...”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“WE SHOULD NOT be doing this,” Lucy said. She was very aware of Jaden’s presence at her back. Her eyes flicked to his reflection in the monitor in front of her, where he was staring right back. “If I get caught...”
“You’re doing it for a good cause,” Jaden said.
“This is blackmail,” Pat chimed in. He was tied to a chair, and as Jaden turned to face him, Pat’s eyes went right to the 9mm in the security chief’s hand.
“Pat,” Jaden said in a soft voice, yet it carried to both of the IT techs. “She’s doing this to help you. Remember when I said I would figure out who was stealing the morphine?”
Pat nodded, his sweaty bangs falling down over the pale skin of his face. Jaden reached out and brushed the hair aside with the barrel of the gun.
“Imagine my surprise, the day we relaxed the guard on the med tent, when IT Pat comes slinking in, looking for a fix. Now, I’m not going to judge you. The end of the world as we know it has put a strain on all of us. But there are people who need that morphine. So, Lucy here is going to do whatever I ask her to. Lord knows why, but she’s sweet on you. She doesn’t want to give me any reason to put you in a condition where you’ll need the morphine, Pat, which is the only way you’re going to get it. Do I make myself clear?”
Shaking and sweating, Pat nodded.
“Good. Have you found anything yet, Lucy?”
Her fingers clacked on the keyboard. “Not yet. The encryption is one thing. Whatever’s encrypted, we can get right past that. But the Command server, it’s just not on this network.” She moved her mouse around, clicking from box to box. “It’s not on any network I’m connected to.”
“Are you connected to all of them?”
She rounded on him. “Duh.”
“Lucy...” Pat said.
Turning back to the monitor, she blew out a breath of air, resolving to get better taste in men. “I’m going to need a drink if... hold on. There’s something. Huh.”
Jaden went to one knee next to her. “What’d you find?”
“Well there’s one computer that’s on the regular island network, and the MAC address matches our files for Dr. Crispin’s personal tower. But it’s not in his office; there’s only one computer in there, and it’s this one.” She pointed to a listing on the screen. “So, unless this is in his living quarters...”
“Check it,” Jaden said.
Lucy tossed her mane of dark hair and cracked her knuckles. “I need some Mountain Dew. And some Jack to drown it in.”
She clicked on the icon for the lone computer, and a prompt came up for a username and password. “Of course,” she said, reaching into her shirt pocket for a small flash drive. It was black with a yellow skull-and-crossbones motif. “A WPA key has a forty-eight bit initialization vector key. That makes a possible five hundred trillion combinations, did you know that?”
“Yes,” Pat said, rather sullenly.
Jaden ignored him. “So what does that mean to me?”
Pat’s head came up. “It’ll take hours for any hacker tool to eat through that kind of encryption. You get that, cop? You’re going to be in here with us for hours. Someone is going to notice me and Lucy aren’t around.”
Jaden smiled, showing a mouthful of teeth, and Pat decided he probably should have just kept quiet.
“When they come looking, little junkie, you want to be the one who explains what’s going on here? I don’t have as much a problem with it as you might think.”
“Shut up, Pat,” Lucy said. The computer pinged, and she clapped her hands. “We’re in!”
“Hours,” Jaden said.
Pat looked confused. “How did you...?”
Lucy petted the thumb drive sticking out of the computer. “This little baby is what got me noticed in the first place. I knew when I wrote it, it would either get me into college or jail.”
Jaden leaned forward. “What’s on the computer?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Looks like this was his entertainment center for when he was working. It’s full of old-man music. London Symphony Orchestra, Govi, Al Di Meola. What is this stuff?”
She clicked on a file called “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway,” and cringed at the sounds of an entire band playing something at breakneck speed, instruments playing notes together that sounded almost impossible to her Top 40-trained ears.
“Old man music,” Jaden said. “What else?”
“It’ll take a while to sort through everything,” Lucy replied. “The computer has a single five-hundred-gig drive; that’s a lot of files to sift through by hand. What are we even looking for?”
Jaden paced, hands behind his back, the 9mm still clenched in his fist. He wasn’t easily rattled, but tech bullshit got right under his skin. His first reaction was usually to see how much a computer liked a bullet through the CPU.
“I can narrow the search by excluding music files,” she said.
“Do that. I’ll be right back. You two stay in here. Do not fuck with me on this.”
He walked out of the room swiftly, and the IT people exchanged looks. Pat opened his mouth to speak, but Lucy put her hand up.
“Just... save it.”
’
Jaden slipped his 9mm into its holster as he walked to the IT center. Pat might have been a junkie, but he was right. Sooner or later, they would be missed. He had to defuse the situation before it became an issue.
He opened the door to the IT lab, and Carmen, the department head, looked up from a circuit board she was soldering. Her light-brown hair had started to go grey over the past month, and he idly wondered if it was because she had run out of dye.
“Mr. Jaden! What brings you around these parts?”
He cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to know, I’ve enlisted the assistance of Pat and Lucy in a sensitive matter.”
Carmen’s dark eyes widened. “Is that so? May I ask what it is?”
Jaden made a face and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I suppose you might hear something about it eventually. They do, after all, work for you.” He looked around the room, drumming his fingers on his belt. “Where’s the other Lucy?”
“Oh, her. She’s out with the maintenance crew, lending a hand with something Dr. Donovan wanted set up. I don’t even know what, but I know she’s terminating fiber optic connections for a batch of video feeds.”
Nodding, Jaden cleared his throat again. “Well, make sure this conversation stays between us. And if Lucy gets to wondering where her co-workers are—”
“Don’t worry,” Carmen said. “They’re running errands for me.”
“Excellent. Here’s the thing: we’ve been receiving a series of encrypt
ed communications over the radio. None of the comms guys are cryptanalysts, but Winchester suggested to me that Lucy was good at that kind of thing.”
“Very good,” Carmen cut in, nodding.
“Well, she’s working on it. Pat’s helping her.”
Carmen snorted. “Whatever Pat’s doing, he isn’t helping. But,” she put her hands up, “if she wants him there, I’m not going to argue. Keeps him out of my hair.”
Jaden smiled. “Thank you.” He had more to say, but was cut off by the blaring PA system.
“Jaden to Radio. Mr. Jaden, report to Radio.”
Carmen put her finger to her lips. “Maybe more coded stuff?”
“Maybe,” Jaden said, leaving the IT lab. He had no earthly idea what it was, but it couldn’t be good. He broke into a jog and was at the Communications door in minutes.
“What is it?” he asked Winchester.
The comms man turned, an odd look on his face. He held up a headset. “It’s Alpha McLoughlin, sir. It’s for you.”
’
“Is he ever coming back?” Pat said. As if in response, the door opened and Jaden strode in.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Lots,” Lucy said, turning the monitor so he could see. “It looks like Crispy kept a video log. The files go back years and years.”
Jaden looked at the screen. “All I have to do to get these to work is double-click on them?”
“Yes.”
He tilted his head at the door. “Get out. Take Pat with you. Say nothing.” To punctuate this last point, he put the 9mm on the desk next to the keyboard.
“We are so gone,” Pat said as Lucy untied him. They left the room, closing the door behind them. Jaden got up and locked it, then sat before the computer and put on a pair of headphones.
He clicked the first video. It was old, old enough that Crispin still had color in his hair.
Have I known him that long?
“Great strides in the experiment,” Crispin was saying. “I had some interaction today with them. They call me Master, but... I feel like their father—”