The Ark (Life of the Dead Book 3)

by Tony Urban

  Mina watched the man throw the heavy tank with one arm. It soared past her and she could see it clear as day. There was even a blue label that read ‘Bernzomatic’. The tank hit the ground and skidded across the snow before coming to a stop in front of the building where she’d been hiding moments ago. She realized she had a choice, but only seconds to come to a decision. She could run to the tank and try to move it away, or she could run from it and let the man who attacked their camp finish what he’d started.

  She heard men and women inside the building shouting, but they were too scared to push past the fire and escape. Instead, they stayed where they were.

  They aren’t worth risking my life over. Mina ran from the fiery blaze, watching as Saw aimed his gun at the tank and shot. It exploded with a roar and made her stumble, almost falling. The yelling inside the building transformed into panicked, agonized shrieks as the wood building was set ablaze.

  Saw climbed into the truck and sat down behind the wheel.

  Don’t go. Not yet. “Better hurry, Birdie.”

  Mina knew her daddy was right for once. She ran to the truck as Saw began to back it away from the camp. She picked up the pace and caught it before he could make the turn. Mina slammed her hand against the driver’s side door.

  Saw peered down from above her. He rolled the window down. “Mina, was it?”

  She nodded. “Are you going somewhere safe?”

  Saw glanced over at Mitch. He flashed a leering grin that showed his black, broken teeth as he turned back to Mina. “Everywhere’s safe when I’m around, love. Ain’t that right, Mitchy?”

  “Sure is.”

  Mina stared up at him. The man was a revolting sack of muscle and rage. He was the type of person she’d have crossed the street to avoid before the plague, but the world had changed now and she had a strong feeling inside that this new world was made for men like Saw.

  Mina took one more glance back at the men and women who called the Ark home. Most died in the fire. Zombies tore through the ones who managed to escape the blaze and the humans were too weak or too dumb to even fight back.

  She looked up at Saw. He still smiled. “Will you take me with you?”

  The door opened. Saw extended his hand. “All you had to do was ask.”

  Mina grabbed his palm and he hoisted her up with one arm, with the ease of lifting a pillow. She got her footing on the door frame and Saw spun her around so she fell into his lap. She could feel his hot breath on her neck. It was sickeningly sweet, like rotten meat. But when she felt his strong hands on her thin waist as he lifted her over him and sat her in the seat, she felt protected. She realized she wasn’t afraid any more. And that’s all she wanted out of life.

  Take that, daddy.

  Wim thought he might have lost his mind. He’d just watched Mina voluntarily join the man who’d attacked them. Who’d set loose zombies. Who’d killed Delphine right in front of them. He didn’t see how it could be real, but as the truck backed away, then did a U-turn in the snowy landscape before heading toward the gate, he was left with no other choice but to believe it.

  He didn’t care about killing more zombies. He only needed to find Ramey and be gone from this awful place. Away from this land that made people do crazy, terrible things. He thought again, as he had so often in the past, that he’d been right all those years to stay on his farm, away from society. If this was how people treated each other, he wanted no part of it.

  Wim jogged toward camp, closing the remaining distance in less than a minute. A man from the Ark grabbed his arm as he passed by.

  “Did you see what happened, Wim?”

  Wim jerked his arm free and didn’t answer. He kept going, ignoring the people and the zombies. Let them fight each other. He wanted no part of it any more.

  Ramey saw Wim storm into the clinic. She was two buildings away and ran after him.

  “Wim!” She called out. But the door had closed.

  She wanted to get to him before he found her father. She didn’t want him to see what Doc had done. The things he had created. The shame she felt over being his daughter burned a hole inside her and she couldn’t imagine Wim knowing that the man who had created her, was also responsible for so much evil and madness.

  Ramey passed the first building. Halfway there. As she moved beyond the second, four zombies staggered into her path. One of them was on fire, the flames licking at his clothing. The smell of burning hair assaulted Ramey’s nose. The other zombies were uninjured, aside from being dead.

  She knew she had no weapons to fight them, and that running was her best choice, but her pulse was thrumming in her ears and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this angry. She wanted to kill them.

  A zombie in athletic shorts, a tank top, and sweatband lunged for her. Ramey hopped to the side and avoided its grasp. She shoved it in the back as it stumbled past her and it did a face plant into the snow.

  The other three came toward her. You’re being stupid. Run away. But still she didn’t run.

  The lone female zombie in the quartet was a sixty-something year old who was shaped like a bowling pin and whose gray hair was wound up in a tight perm. She snarled at Ramey and swatted with French manicured nails. Ramey jumped back, out of her reach. She scanned the area around her, looking for anything she could use to battle the creatures. There was nothing. She backed away, retreating around the corner of the building. Searching.

  Someone had been installing a brick facade on the building when the snow started to fly. A few bags of mortar mix leaned against the door, along with a two-foot-tall stack of bricks. It wasn’t much but it was something. Ramey grabbed a brick.

  The bowling pin zombie shuffled around the corner and Ramey was ready for her. She slammed the brick into the woman’s face, connecting with her brow. There was a crack that reminded Ramey of peeling a hardboiled egg and the dead woman’s skin split open revealing white skull underneath.

  The zombie blinked. Then she began to lean backward, slowly at first but speeding up as the momentum built until she crashed against the building and slithered down the side. When she hit the ground, she remained motionless.

  The burning zombie was at Ramey’s shoulder. She could feel the heat coming off it. And the smell. God, it was sickening, like a crematorium crossed with roadkill on a hot, August afternoon.

  Ramey swung the brick and hit it in the jaw. It groaned and a few broken teeth spilled from its mouth, along with a slimy trail of black drool. She hit it again, this time catching it above the ear. Her fingers were singed by the flames and the zombie went down so quick that she fell on top of it.

  She felt the fire against her body and rolled off. Her jackets smoldered and she dropped the brick so she could beat at it with her hands.

  In her distraction, she didn’t realize there was a zombie behind her until it grabbed hold of her chestnut colored hair. The zombie dragged Ramey backward and she skidded along the snow. She was away from the bricks now. Helpless.

  In front of her, the fitness zombie approached. But something was different. Now, in his hand, he held a small trowel. As he stepped toward Ramey he kept raising it up and stabbing it down repeatedly.

  Ramey didn’t know if it was trying to use the tool as a weapon or if it was some sort of bizarre muscle memory. Maybe he’d been a brick-layer in between running marathons. But either way, he was getting closer.

  She tried to yank herself free from the zombie that held her hair but its fingers were entwined in her long locks. Ramey changed course and did a 180 so that she was no longer on her ass, but on her knees.

  Ramey could see the zombie that held her was wearing flannel pajamas with tiny footballs printed all over them. Her head was at groin level and that gave her an idea. Ramey didn’t know if crotch shots worked on zombies, but it was worth a try.

  She punched as hard as she could manage. Her fist sunk deep into the creature’s groin. The sensation reminded Ramey of pounding out bread dough.

  And somew
hat to her surprise, it worked. The zombie released her hair as it stumbled backward. Ramey turned away from it, ready to retrieve the brick. But she turned right in time for the zombie with the trowel to swipe the blade down, into her face.

  The metal sliced into her cheek, cutting a deep gash. She felt a hard jolt as the trowel hit her cheekbone. As the pain rushed through her, she jerked her head which sent the tool skidding to the side. An L-shaped chunk of flesh hung from her face and she thought it felt extra cold as the air hit the wound.

  The zombie fell into her, knocking her back, crashing into the building. The back of her head hit the wall and everything blazed bright white, whiter than the snow. She lost herself for a moment but came to when she landed on the ground, and the zombie landed on top of her.

  It belched a mouthful of putrid, rotting air into her face and she thought she might puke from the smell of it. It lunged toward her, but Ramey reached up and caught its headband with her thumb. The material stretched, stretched so far, she thought it might have enough leeway to still bite her, but finally it stopped. Its head bounced forward and back, forward and back. Every time it came close its vile breath sent new waves of nausea rushing through her.

  In the fall, the fitness zombie had dropped the trowel and now Ramey strained to reach it with her free hand. The exertion, coupled with the blow to her head, kept making her vision go fuzzy. Her thoughts came slow, like she was half-asleep and part of her just wanted to close her eyes and make it all stop.

  But she knew doing that meant death and she wasn’t about to die yet. She tried one more time to grab the trowel, her fingertips glancing across the frigid metal. Just a little further. She stretched as far as possible with the zombie pinning her down. She touched the trowel again, could pinch the metal between her index finger and thumb. Now she was able to pull it closer. She flipped it around and grabbed the wooden handle.

  The next time the zombie’s head bounced toward her, Ramey was waiting. She rammed the trowel into its mouth and didn’t stop pushing until it hit bone. The corners of its mouth were sliced open and the blade jutted out from between its teeth like it was chewing on a cigar.

  The creature flailed with its arms, now less interested in the hot meal beneath it than the tool stuck in its mouth. Ramey took advantage of the distraction and pushed it off her.

  She rolled away from it, then bounced to her feet. That strange feeling like she was floating in a pool returned and she held her arms out at her sides to steady herself. Get it together, Ramey. If you go down now its game over. She held as still as possible until the feeling faded. Good. Now forget about the zombies and find Wim.

  She ignored the fitness zombie which thrashed on the ground, and the pajama-wearing zombie which was again stumbling toward her, its injured nuts forgotten. There was no time for them. There was only time for Wim.

  Wim found the clinic empty which was pretty much what he expected. He headed toward the open doors which led to Doc’s lab. Its downward corridor was cloaked in red light and he felt like there was a fair chance he was walking straight into Hell, but he continued.

  Halfway into his descent, the first moving thing he saw was a zombie with two heads. He blinked hard, thinking he must be seeing things, but when he opened them, the creature was still there. It staggered toward him, traveling up the tunnel. Its heads lolling aimlessly atop a bloated, purple neck.

  It reminded Wim of the two-headed calf that had been born on the farm all those years before. His pa had called it an abomination. What would the old man think if he were here to see this horrible creature?

  Pa had done the merciful thing and put the calf down. Now it was Wim’s turn to do the same. He shot the head on the right. It flopped backward as a spray of brains exploded out the back of its skull. But the creature kept coming. Wim ejected the cartridge, loaded a new one and closed the bolt. He shot again, hitting the second head. The bullet caught it just above its eye and the force whipped its head sideways and he saw a fissure open where the head was attached to the oversized neck. He thought it might come loose, but before that could happen the monster collapsed in a heap. Wim continued.

  The remainder of his journey was uneventful and the opening to Doc’s underground lair was unimpeded. He kept the stock of the rifle against his shoulder, ready to shoot, as he stepped inside.

  It really is Hell in here.

  The room was filled with Frankenstein-type zombies which staggered about, bumping into each other, into gurneys, into the walls. The creatures seemed even more clumsy or maybe stupid, than their normal counterparts, if zombies could even be smart or dumb, let alone normal.

  Wim saw a female zombie with its stomach torn open and all her insides missing coming toward him. He aimed the rifle.

  “William! Don’t!”

  Wim turned to see Doc in the back corner. He held what looked like a fat, blood covered baby in his arms, but that couldn’t be possible.

  “Don’t shoot her. She has no teeth. She’s harmless. All my creations are. Look closer if you don’t trust me.”

  Wim did not trust the man and had no desire to take a closer look, but he squinted into the scope and peered at the female zombie’s mouth. He realized Doc was right. Her mouth was a scarred mass of hollow gums and nothing more. He checked a second zombie, this one looked as if it had been skinned from head to toe. Its mouth hung open giving Wim a good look. Again, it was toothless.

  He knew Doc was a liar, but he didn’t see any point in checking the others. He lowered the rifle.

  “You’re worse than them, you know?” Wim said.

  Doc shrugged his shoulders as he rocked back and forth. “Worse isn’t the word I would use, but I know your vocabulary and intellect is limited so I won’t take that personally. Tell me, William, have you even so much as glanced at a dictionary or thesaurus? And s, you don’t embarrass yourself, the latter is not a kind of dinosaur.”

  Wim was tempted to shoot him right then but did not. He wanted answers, not more death.

  Doc rose from the stool on which he was sitting and took a few steps in Wim’s direction.

  “Did you kill Emory?”

  “Of course, I did.”

  Wim had no doubts of this, but the blunt matter-of-factness of Doc’s answer sent his temper soaring.

  “The old coot was too smart for his own good. He thought he was being quite sneaky, breaking into my lab, but he never thought to ask the most rudimentary question: Why would Delphine of all people, have keys to this place?

  Wim processed this, all the while feeling dumb that he wasn’t putting the pieces together quick enough. “You mean Delphine— “

  “Told me everything.”

  Wim processed the fact that Delphine had betrayed them. That she’d got Emory killed. He suddenly felt a whole lot less bad about seeing her get shot.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” Doc said.

  Wim tried to get out of his head and back to the matter at hand. “For what?”

  “Marrying my daughter, of course. It wounded me to not receive an invitation. Never mind the fact that you didn’t have the courtesy to ask me for her hand.”

  Wim shook his head, trying to clear it of Doc’s ramblings. He looked closer at the object Doc was carrying. It was a baby. Where the heck did he get that? It didn’t matter. He pulled the folder out of his jacket and held it up to Doc.

  “What’s this mean?”

  “You’ve been snooping in my house. Naughty boy, William. Very naughty. Santa won’t be bringing you any gifts this year.”

  Wim stepped toward him. They were only a few feet apart now. He shoved the file at Doc’s face. “Tell me!” His voice was so full of rage that he surprised himself.

  Even Doc flinched. He pulled the newborn closer to his chest. “Easy now, you’ll scare the baby.”

  “Why does it say ‘test’ under vaccines? What did you do to her?”

  Doc’s momentary fear dissipated and his crazy jackal grin returned. “What did I do to her? I saved
her you buffoon.”

  Wim felt like he was being spoken to in riddles and he couldn’t decipher whether Doc was intentionally being confusing or if he really was too dumb to understand. He felt some of the anger leave him, replaced by self-doubt. He’d already been responsible for the attack on the Ark. He’d trusted Delphine, who in turn, betrayed them all. Maybe he was in the process of fowling something else up. When he spoke, his voice was on the verge of wavering. “What do you mean?”

  Doc’s smile grew so wide Wim thought the man’s face might split in half. He was loving this. “Come now, William, you’re not even living up to my, admittedly very low expectations, of you. What does the chart say?”

  Doc reached out and snatched the file from his hand. He held it up, displaying it for Wim to see. Shoving it in Wim’s face now. “Vaccines. Administration dates. Batch numbers.” He threw the file at Wim. The pages bounced off Wim’s face and fluttered to the floor. “Connect the dots. Tell me what it means!”

  Wim’s confidence was gone. He thought about what he was being told, tried to understand it. “You gave Ramey a vaccine. I get that. But for what?”

  Doc waved his free arm around the room, then toward the corridor. “For this! For the plague. Are you figuring it out now?”

  Wim was. He didn’t want to say it but he knew Doc wasn’t going to do it for him. So, he spit out the words. “Ramey isn’t really immune.”

  “Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Of course, at the time I told her it was the flu shot. Which in retrospect, wasn’t entirely a lie, now was it? If I hadn’t given her the vaccine before I came here, she’d be just like every other zombie wandering around eating people to survive. I saved her, just like I saved all of my followers here on the Ark.”

  “That’s why you knew she’d come here.”