“Hey, I sympathize; believe me. But one thing at a time. That room is sealed, the only way in or out is through that door. The ventilation is out, the vents are welded on to prevent exactly what we were just thinking of doing—do you have a phone?” he blurted, a thought suddenly hitting him.
Rankin reached into his back pocket and withdrew a black skinned iPhone; his.
“Well, that works,” he snorted, reaching out and reclaiming it from the Sergeant. There was a missed call from Monica, but that would have to wait. Instead, he dialed his son, who was just down the hall and hopefully at a computer monitor. “Caleb,” he whispered as his son answered, “are you looking at the feed for the med-lab?”
“Dad, don’t go in there,” his son’s trembling voice trickled back over the line. “We can’t see anything. A camera must have gotten busted, but he attacked the soldiers, made them do things—.”
His nose wrinkled as he tried to piece together what his son was saying, “made them do things? What are you talking about?” Rankin gave him a hard look but he shook his head, he didn’t know himself yet.
“I don’t know. We saw him bite one of them when they adjusted one of his straps, then it all went crazy. None of us knows what’s going on, but we’ve barricaded the door, used Ben’s fridge,” Caleb whispered back, the fear drenching his every word.
“Good, stay that way. We’ll take care of this. Don’t open that door until you get a call from me, understand?” he returned and once he got an okay from his son, hung up. “Your men are compromised Sergeant.”
The older man undid the fastener on his side-arm and raised his weapon, “then that man is going to pay.”
“Todd, those days are over. I'm a hunting dog now,” the hideous voice drifted his way, followed by a wailing that sounded like a mentally ill dog in heat. “Remember the rules, Todd, cardio, seatbelts, and double tap to the head! Now bring me a fucking Twinkie!” A pounding began on the door and it sounded like more than one pair of hands beating at it.
He looked at his knife, then at the sergeant, “fuck.”
“Hey!” a hoarse whispered echoed towards him. He turned to look at his rear and saw Joseph approaching his position, an AR-15 in one hand, his rifle in the other. “Kids told me you might need back up.”
“Oh, thank God,” he muttered as he accepted the offered assault weapon. “I thought I was going to have to pretend that this butter knife was the size of Crocodile Dundee’s, no offense,” he added seeing the frown on the Sergeant’s face. “Just saying, we got better in the armory if you want to drop in on your way out.”
“Why don’t we can the chatter and deal with the problem at hand?” Rankin snapped, snatching his knife and making it disappear. “You locked and loaded?”
Joseph nodded and was going to say something else when that oily voice drifted forth one last time, “oh, I smell me a pig. Oink, oink, oink, oink. Here piggy, piggy, piggy. What do you say, Babe? Want another shot at me? Boys, we are about to feast! There’s always room for bacon!”
“Okay, that does it,” Rankin growled, stepping forward and giving the doorknob a good jerk. It flung itself wide, barely missing the soldier that backed out of its way, weapon raised. His weapon immediately discharged and there was an answering thud following right after.
Joseph swung to the rear of the hall, weapon up, his training taking over.
A flurry of limbs burst out of the door and both men depressed their triggers, but the body simply jerked from side to side, hands outstretched and tearing at the soldier that had been its commander. Teeth were bared, drool and blood sprayed forth, as nails began to tear at the man’s upraised arms, the sergeant’s gun forced up and away as he tried to keep the walker off of him.
He fired one shot and blew the creature’s brains out the other side of his head, the ear disintegrating with the impact.
“Fuck, that was my medic,” Rankin cursed, stepping over his comrade’s body and taking a position by the door.
He glanced at Joseph, nodded, then swiftly stepped through the archway and into the room beyond. There was gore on the floor and his right foot slipped, his aim faltering, as he looked upon the horror before him. Something banged on a counter directly to his rear. He began to swing around but got struck hard by something coming from the direction of the open doorway. He fell to the ground with a rough smack. He felt exposed. His suit had been removed, he was in a black T-shirt and jeans, and had no protection from the hands that began tearing at him. He screamed, but the sound was drowned out by the laughter of the lunatic bound to a chair in the center of the room, head thrown back and eyes dancing with delight.
Unable to breathe, he fought against his attacker, a soldier laden with combat gear, fatigues, and a jaw that came within inches of tearing his nose off. “Holy fuck, someone give me a hand!” he managed, hearing the scuffling of feet around him.
The weight was suddenly gone and he heaved in a breath of air and turned on his side. His arms were burning, his lungs aching, and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he wet himself. Black and red gore caked the side of his face, as he hadn’t cared what he rolled into as long as he turned away from the maniac grinning at him with mischievous joy.
He heard the cracking of a neck then the thump of a body. “Clear,” he heard Joseph say, but he refused to turn over just yet; everything hurt.
“Damn, Michaels,” he heard Rankin curse once more, then a shot. “Tore him apart so bad he couldn’t even crawl. You sick son of a bitch, you’re going to pay for this.”
There was a tap on his right shoulder and he felt a hand grasp his. Reluctantly letting his arm get pulled, he went with it and managed to finally get to his feet. His chest hurt from impacting the floor, his back wailed in pain, and his hips barely held his weight, as he had twisted on his way down to prevent from falling on his face. He felt tacky on the left side of his body and refused to look at himself in one of the nearby mirrors. Jagged bits of flesh were torn away along his arms and he could feel a slight trickle of blood on his brow.
“You look like shit,” Joseph confirmed. “Always check your blind spots, you know that. If I had known you’d just run in blind—.”
He growled, “I get it, I fucked up. Damn near cost me my life.”
“Well it sure as shit cost you a pair of shorts, that’s for sure,” Joseph snarked back with a grin and a wave across his nose.
“Yeah, fuck you too, bro. What the hell took you so long?” he threw back, refusing to give into the humor of the situation. There was something sick going on in this room and he had a sinking feeling he hadn’t even scratched the surface of what it was.
Joseph’s smile slipped, “I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. Had to make sure the fourth guy wasn’t hiding behind the door as well.”
His weight shifted and he almost fell over but for Joseph’s hand reaching out to steady him. “Fuck, this hurts,” he groaned, tentatively touching the gashes on his arms. Laughter erupted and he instantly remembered, he had an audience. Turning to face Sean for the first time since the man faked his death, he looked into the cold manic eyes and spat a wad of blood onto the floor. “Laugh it up, it may be the last thing you ever do.”
Rankin grabbed Sean’s shirt collar at the base of his neck and yanked, putting his gun to the man’s head, “what did you do to my men?”
“Man,” Sean corrected, nodding at the fallen corpse at Todd’s feet, “he did the rest.” Then he broke out into a fresh bout of cackles.
“You think this is funny? I should blow your fucking head off right now!” Rankin thundered, giving Sean’s neck a yank and almost toppling the chair.
Sean grinned up at him, “you could, but then I’m quite sure your boss will just love that you pissed away your one chance to find a cure for this thing.”
He watched the exchange in a detached fashion, his mind was having a hard time keeping up with what was going on. The man in front of him was Sean, but then again, he wasn’t. He looked like him, but he had never seen the m
an so pumped up, so frenzied, so full of—crazy. What had happened in the last few days to make him like that? Was it the atrocities he had committed or had the world just driven him mad?
“Oh look, Todd is at a loss for words. Quick, someone take note of that! That’s a rare thing indeed. Walker got your tongue, boy?” Sean directed in his direction.
He looked from the enraged soldier to the madman within his grip, then shook his head. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked, stunned. There were a lot of things he had been prepared for, but the unbridled lunacy in his friend’s eyes had not been one of them.
Sean cackled, “I think that bastard Frisk tried infecting me with an early stage of the virus, hoped it would kill me and let him off the hook. Well, who’s the asshat now?”
“Early stage of the virus? How the hell—never mind. That doesn’t matter. Are you completely insane or is there anything of the man I knew left in that thick skull of yours?” he returned, stepping forward and meeting the man’s glare.
“Does it matter? Rambo here is going to kill me,” Sean cackled, giving the Sergeant a wide-eyed look and a crazy grin. “Why so serious? Say, would you like to know how I got these scars?”
He slapped Sean across the face and barely missed the man’s teeth as they chased after his exposed hand. “Snap out of it!”
His phone went off.
“What?” he nearly screamed.
Caleb’s panicked voice spilled forth, “Dad, don’t let him bite you. That’s how he got that soldier guy. He bit him and it made him turn!”
He glanced down at Sean, then at the side of his hand, as if making sure no skin had been broken. “That’s impossible.” Another voice was aching to be heard, yelling from the background that they had played the video feed back and confirmed that’s what took down the soldiers. A grin from Sean made his doubts disappear and he balled up his fist, ready to punch the man in the face. “You knowingly turned someone into a zombie?”
Sean’s head rocked back, whether from Rankin’s rage or Sean’s laughter, who knew? But the bloodied teeth had a bit of flesh between them and his stomach turned.
“Sgt. Rankin, you need to get control of yourself,” Joseph commanded, coming alongside and putting a hand on the soldier’s arm. “You have your orders and they haven’t changed, they need him alive.”
“If this fucker can turn people just by biting them, there’s no way I’m taking him back to the Safe Zone. Imagine what would happen if an outbreak started there!” Rankin growled, slamming Sean’s head forward and driving the chair back to the ground.
He ended his call and looked at Sean once more, bending over, but careful not to get too close. “Are you full of shit? There is no cure, is there? If there were, why wouldn’t you have already taken it? You like your redundancies. I don’t see you idly sitting by when you could be safe and virus free hidden in a hole somewhere.”
“You want to bet your life on that?” Sean sneered, head lowered, eyes glaring at him with delight.
He briefly held the man’s gaze, then straightened up, “fuck, I can’t tell if he’s lying. Whatever this virus is doing to him, it’s impossible to get a read either way. This isn’t the man I knew.”
“I agree,” Joseph nodded. “I didn’t spend as much time as you and your wife did with the man, but this is a different creature strapped to this chair. Did you say he gave a bomb to a religious fanatic?”
“Excuse me?” he asked, confused. “What bomb?”
“Brothers and sisters, our time has come! The hour is upon us! May God’s wrath descend upon the new Babylon and wipe it’s stain off the Earth! May our sacrifice be our road to everlasting peace in the heavenly gates! BOOM!” Sean cackled, rocking in his chair and slamming his feet down to thunder with that last outburst.
Joseph slammed the butt of his rifle against the man’s head and rocked it, Sean’s jaw slackened, and he immediately went silent. “This asshole is responsible for taking out the Hoover Dam.”
“No way. How the hell did he manage that?” he asked in horror, remember the mushroom cloud he’d seen on those monitors that first day. “The timing seemed oddly convenient, and yes, we have shit you can’t buy at K-Mart, but a nuke?”
“A dirty bomb, yes. I don’t know how he did it, that’s above my paygrade. This virus, whatever it’s doing to him, it’s pushed him over the edge. He was determined to end the world, one way or another,” Rankin told them, squaring his shoulders and looking down at the man seated before them.
He shook his head with disbelief, “this is just crazy. I don’t believe it.”
“The world has gone crazy. Get with the program. You don’t want me to kill him? Fine, he gets a quick reprieve,” the soldier told Joseph, “but I’m getting a fucking muzzle and a set of thick gloves. This man hurts one more person, his ass is KO.”
“I’ll do it myself,” Joseph agreed, watching as Rankin abruptly left, leaving the two of them hovering over the man that had once been their friend. “I know, it sounds unbelievable. But how is that different than all we were doing before this happened? I mean, nine compounds? Gear that very few military units get to carry? The amount of land, back-up plans, tech, warehouses full of everything imaginable? That’s a lot of cash man. He had to be making it somehow. Couldn’t all be from his old companies or books, right? Maybe this fucker was selling shit. Can you imagine if he tried to market this virus? How much a country would have paid for both it and the cure? He would have been beyond rich and wouldn’t have to do anything but sit back and watch the world burn from the safety of the compounds he built.”
He looked from Joseph to Sean, then back to the former police officer watching him. “I just—have a hard time—I don’t know.”
Joseph smirked, “with your imagination, I can’t fathom you having a hard time wrapping your mind around this.”
“Oh, shut it. So what do we do now?” he wondered out loud, looking at the gore around him and the corpses at his feet.
“We don’t do anything. You’ve done enough,” Joseph responded, giving him a pat on the shoulder.
He glared at the man, “what the hell are you talking about? I’m going! There’s no way I’m staying here. Sean’s conditions be damned!”
Joseph’s hands squeezed lightly and a sad look crossed the man’s face. “Dude, think this through. You have kids, eight of them if you count Sam’s. Where’s Monica? Is she here to watch over them? No. She’s in Montana, and if I know her, she’ll be insisting on going as well. Which means both of those kids’ parents are going to be in a madhouse of Sean’s creation and there’s no guarantees either of you will come back. Are you really going to orphan them like that? Sam seems like a capable woman, but raising eight kids? That’s not counting how many more were orphaned today by this man’s hand. We’re running out of adults here. Me? I have no family, no kids, and no girl to leave behind. Not to mention, I’m better trained for these situations than you are. No, you are needed here my friend.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. He needed to go—to see this through to the end, but Joseph’s argument could not be lightly dismissed. How could he run off and just abandon his family? There had been plenty of close calls already and the world wasn’t getting any safer.
Joseph’s hand fell away and the man nodded, “good, you know that I’m right. Trust me, you need to stay here. This leadership crap? It’s not for me. Point and I’ll shoot, but herding a bunch of people and deciding who lives and dies? No thank you.”
“You’re all going to die down here,” a slithery voice whispered in front of them.
“Shut the fuck up,” Joseph snarled and hit the man in the head with a closed fist. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for that muzzle to get here. I’ve had enough of this man’s bullshit. Say, you don’t think they have that Hannibal Lecter mask, do you?”
Surprisingly, that made him laugh.
Chapter 25
Kiss
Sabrina
C
ompound 2
Two men were leading Sean towards a chopper, a heavy black mask over the man’s head. He looked like he was being lead to the gallows and it made her want to smile; then she remembered why she was out here. “That’s some bullshit, other people can go. You don’t have to do this,” she told him severely. Joseph eyed her, making her feel like she should cower, but she stood straighter and refused to back down. “You don’t need to play hero!”
Joseph smirked, “this isn’t about playing hero and who do you suggest go instead? Todd? Jim? Matt? He’s still injured and wouldn’t last a minute in a serious firefight. Oh, I know, we can send some of the kids!”
She slugged him in the shoulder, “don’t be a smart ass!”
He chuckled, “better than a dumbass.”
She had to look away; he was truly pissing her off and trying to make light of it was infuriating. The worst part? She didn’t have any idea why she was getting so worked up. They hadn’t exchanged anything but a few looks and most of them had been hers, while his had diverted away or not greeted with the same enthusiasm or need.
His hands fell on her shoulders and she looked up at him with surprise. “I get it. I do. But I have to do this. There really is no one else.”
“Why does anyone have to go at all? They are the fucking military! Let them handle it! They’ve got a whole frickin’ army! You’re just one man!” she yelled, the sounds of the rotors starting to drown out their voices as they cycled up.
“That may be, but none of them know Sean, what he’s capable of. Only those that worked with him, built this place with him, truly know what they’ll be walking into. I have to go. For Roxanne. For Casey. For Ben, Rodger, and Lucy. For all those we have lost and might still lose. I need to see this through,” he told her firmly and she could tell there was seriously no persuading him otherwise.
She sighed and dropped her head. Why the hell was this bothering her so much?
Fingers tilted her head up and suddenly his lips were upon hers.
The Rotting Souls Series (Book 4): Charon's Coffers Page 14