She ended the call and let out a huge sigh of relief. “Whew, glad that’s over. Why are they in the business park? Wouldn’t somebody know what they’re doing there? How come the police aren’t looking into it? You know, maybe we should call them first.”
“Hey, one question at a time. C’mon, they don’t believe the adults, you think they’ll believe us? Besides, they’re too busy trying to round up the rest of the Zs. We talked about this. It’ll be fine.”
Carm’s face grew thoughtful. “I suppose, but the police still have to take care of other crimes, too, right? I still think we should call them.”
I sighed and looked at the ceiling. “All right, you call then. Tell them your dog is missing and see what they say.”
“No, I’ll tell them someone stole my dog.” She ended with a pout.
I couldn’t help turning on the sarcasm. “And they’ll get right on it, huh? Gee, Miss, we’re kind of busy right now getting all these zombies and hoodlums off the streets, but we’ll drop that and help you look for your dog. Think they’ll do that?”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “You don’t have to be so snotty. You win. We’ll go look. I think we should have Gabe and Jesse go with us, though. You know, in case.”
This time I raised my eyebrows at her. Gabe? She knew we weren’t talking. Not since he’d gone all quiet on me two weeks ago. We’d been together like almost every day for the past year. He’d been with me fighting Zs, and helped me in the hospital, and stayed with me when I got really sick. Then all of a sudden, he just goes off and disappears. No texts, no calls, nothing. I’d been really mad, but now I was just plain hurt.
“Carm, that’s mean, even for you. You know what Gabe did.”
“Bec, no, I’m not being mean,” she insisted. “Jesse texted me. He said they got caught up in a Z sweep. Their attorney had to bail them out of jail. They’re on their way here.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Here? How come Gabe didn’t tell me himself?”
Carm shook her head. “You better ask him that, and maybe talk about some other things, too. You guys always seem to be fighting.”
My cousin was right. He and I had been arguing–a lot. I wasn’t sure why except I’d been feeling, I don’t know, kind of different lately. Cranky. Really crabby and icky.
“Never mind,” I snapped, my annoyance growing at Little Miss Right Again. “I’ll text him. I want him to bring his Nikon and his video camera. We might need them.” I did that and headed for the door. “Let’s take a ride. I want to see what this place looks like. We’ll just take a quick peek.”
Carm gave me a look like I’d grown a third eyeball in the center of my forehead. The idea had me frantically touch my skin in case something had shifted or moved. It hadn’t. As weird as it sounded, I knew with my condition anything could happen. But that wasn’t the worst thing I had to deal with at the moment, of course.
“You forget something?” she asked. “You think Tia is going to let us go wander around like nothing happened after our visitors this morning?”
Big sigh. No, I hadn’t forgotten. The idea of how to get our aunt to ease up on her restrictions had me feeling like I was trapped in a cage and had no choices, which I didn’t. I was tired of being inside.
I needed to do something. I needed to find that puppy.
We went downstairs to the kitchen where I poured myself a fresh glass of cranberry protein juice and Carm grabbed some potato chips. I eyed the newspaper, noting the stories urging people to not be afraid to resume their lives. Spending money, reopening the stores, and getting people back to normalcy, was the only way to get the local economy recovering, one story said.
Should I push for my aunt to go out and take us shopping? I’d decided to make the suggestion when the phone rang. Carm and I exchanged glances as we listened to my aunt’s side of the conversation.
“Hilda, that’s wonderful,” Tia said. “I’m so happy you and Enrique got the new office set up. I wondered if you would be able to make the move with all the terrible things going on outside. You say it seems safer? Hmm, funny, we caught two of those monsters outside our house this morning. Well, you’re right. We hadn’t seen any before that for a few weeks. It has quieted down a lot. The boxes? Yes, I still have them. Oh, it can’t wait? I know, I’d love to see the office and…well, you know, maybe you’re right. I’ve been cooped up in the house too long. Wait, uno momento, let me get a pen.”
I passed a pen and paper to my aunt. As she wrote down the address, I felt more hopeful about getting out of the house. I tried to act nonchalant when she finished talking and hung up the phone.
“Well, niñas, it looks like my friends moved their business and need my help. I have some boxes of records I was holding for them. Why they need it now, I don’t know…” She paused and glanced at the newspaper I’d moved closer. “Hmm, I see the mayor said things are clearing up. He claims it’s safer.” She gave a snort of contempt. “Huh, even with those two monsters at our door this morning?”
I shrugged and tried to sound encouraging. “I’ve seen more people outside. Even Amelia said she was going back to work.”
My aunt raised an eyebrow, but seemed to come to terms with the changes. “She did? Well, I guess she knows better than anyone what’s going on. You girls want to take a ride? Bring those boxes from downstairs out to the car. I have to admit I’m tired of being in the house. The ride will do us all good.”
Once the two of us got settled in the back seat, Tia headed out on Route 83 and shot over to Highway 50. Carm pulled out her phone. “Tia, where are we going?”
Tia peered at Carm in the rearview mirror. “It’s that new business park on Sheridan.”
I gave Carm a discreet poke with my elbow and smirked at her little yelp. “I heard about that. It has a funny name. Tall–”
“Tallman Business Park,” my aunt said.
“Yeah, that’s it. What’s the address?”
“One, four, one,” my aunt said.
Carm leaned out of reach before I poked her again. Perfect! We wanted to see what was going on at one, two, one. With any luck, the two places were close, if not right next to each other.
We drove in silence the rest of the way. It was nice to drive normal again–no dodging Zs, no running over gory, yucky Z parts splattered all over the street now that the National Guard had rounded up most of them and cleared the city. Even Tia seemed to relax and enjoy the ride. She wasn’t all hunched over as she drove. She held the steering wheel looser, not with her hands like talons, as she had been doing.
Even Carm seemed calmer. Good. Now all we had to do was look around without raising our aunt’s suspicions. We rounded the curve and pulled to a stop at the stop sign.
“There it is.” Carm pointed to the large painted wood sign across the street. Tallman Business Park, it said. Business at Its Best.
Tia turned right and swung onto a gravel drive. We followed the road, Carm pointing out the new buildings we passed. Giant cement warehouses lined the road interspersed with smaller, ranch-style office buildings featuring different but contrasting shades of vinyl siding. The park’s past use as a trailer home park hadn’t been totally erased, though. A small section of trailers remained barely visible behind a big wood fence in the back.
“I wonder how it is around here at night,” I asked. “Mom said most of these old, run-down trailer parks are disappearing. They’re getting closed down if they don’t upgrade and make improvements.”
Tia nodded and sighed softly. “It can get pretty rough down here at night. It has to be pretty bad if this is the only place you can live.”
Me and Carm exchanged glances.
The first row had six large warehouses, three on each side. We pulled into one of the parking areas near the first building. My mind worked out the next step to take as Tia turned off the engine. I watched her scan the area before she opened the door.
“Girls, you want to stay here or come in with me? It seems safe enough.”
<
br /> My eyes met Carm’s before I gave a nonchalant shrug. “We can wait here. It’s nice to be outside.”
“All right.” Tia’s face creased with concern and then relaxed. “I suppose it’ll be fine. I may be a while as you know how Hilda likes to talk.”
“You want us to bring the boxes in?” I asked.
“No, Enrique will get them. You girls keep an eye out. And if you do get out of the car, don’t go far.”
I smiled, pleased with how things were working out. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
Both of us watched her walk away. Once she went inside, I reached for the car door handle.
“Now what?” Carm asked.
“We better not waste time,” I answered. “Let’s go see where our building is.”
We got out and walked around the corner opposite of where our aunt had gone in. Lucky for us, the building had no windows on the side. I checked the numbers as we walked until we got to the second warehouse. A small sign in front indicated we’d found our destination. The sign also advertised spaces for lease and invited visitors to contact the management for information. I grabbed a brochure with a map and the names of the businesses to look at later.
We walked to the corner of the building, figuring there had to be an entrance for deliveries and unloading. Instead we found something better–a couple picnic tables which gave us a good view of both buildings.
“We can sit here and watch what’s going on.”
“I could go for a snack, I’m hungry,” Carm said.
“You’re always hungry.”
Carm answered by sticking out her tongue. Luckily, any pending argument had to wait when a plain white van pulled up. A man wearing a dark blue jacket and pants got out and walked to the back of the van. He opened the door, took out two boxes, and set a clipboard on top before heading for the back entrance.
“Quick, Carm, get a picture.”
She pulled the phone from her pocket too late. The man disappeared inside.
“Sorry, I missed it,” she said. “Maybe he’ll take some more boxes out?”
“Maybe, but if he doesn’t, we better go. Something bothers me about those boxes he carried in.”
“They didn’t have any writing on them,” Carm added.
“No, not that. I thought I saw holes on the sides.
“Holes?”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t need those unless something inside needed air. The boxes might’ve been empty, but if they had animals in them, then they were knocked out or-or worse.” I gulped. “It was quiet. Much too quiet.”
The quiet didn’t last long, though. A familiar sounding moan drew our attention. We turned and stared in shock at two ugly Zs staggering in our direction.
Almost on cue, Carm began to hyperventilate. “Bec-Bec, what’re we going to do? What about Tia? What if she comes out?”
I grabbed Carm’s wrist and tried to calm her, not easy to do since I knew how vulnerable we were. With things clearing up, I’d taken to not carrying around our BB guns or anything else to use in our defense. I now realized how dumb that had been.
I watched the two zombies shamble forward, still yards away, but close enough that I could see the ratty clothes hanging from their skeletal forms. My nose wrinkled. Even with my limited sense of smell, their distinctive rotten meat odor made me gag. More moans drifted our way.
“Carm, we don’t have any weapons. All we can do is get the security guard. On the count of three. One, two–”
She bolted. I followed, the two of us running inside and raising the alarm. “Zombies! Security-security! Two zombies outside! Someone, help!”
Finally, in what felt like forever if only minutes, two security guards rushed out, guns drawn. Several office workers gathered by the door to watch. I saw our chance. Gunshots and screams signaled the two men weren’t the best of shots. I signaled Carm to follow and ran down the hall to a large door. The sign said Employees Only. I peered through the window into some kind of workroom.
Urging Carm to get her phone ready, I pushed through the door into a room filled with two steel tables and several desks. To our surprise, rows of empty steel cages lined the back wall. At least I thought they were empty. Growls and barks sounded from two of the lower cages. One held a small black dog. A brown dog sat in the other. No sign of Fluffy. Heavy locks prevented me from grabbing the dogs and running.
Carm interrupted my observations. “Bec, we have to get out of here.”
I nodded and told her to take a couple photos with her camera. “Make sure you get a photo of the wall. Hurry up. I’m going to yell about the zombies as a distraction, then follow me out.”
A minute later, I ran out and around the corner, nearly knocking down two women dressed in white lab coats. “Hey, what are you doing in here?” one yelled. “Security!”
I cut off their calls of alarm with my own. “Run-run! Zombies are coming! Get security. Hurry, run!”
The women quickly forgot their questions about me and rushed down the opposite hall, yelling as they went. Their actions gave me and Carm enough time to get back to the entrance. The workers and the delivery man ignored us as they watched the security men directing the disposal of the two zombies now lying in the center of the road. The two of us ran and circled around the opposite end of the building to make our way back to the car.
The thought of what could be going on at that warehouse put both of us in a bad mood as we got home and went up to my bedroom.
“Bec, you think maybe it’s some kind of animal hospital?” Carm asked.
I raised my eyebrows. “Over there? So out of the way?”
My suspicions could result from an over-active imagination and nothing more, but I doubted it. I plopped on the bed, then jumped back up and pulled the brochure from my back pocket. “I almost forgot about this. It’s that map from the business park. Let’s see what other businesses are there.”
We studied the layout, the names of the businesses, and the details about the park. “There’s a paper place, a trucking office, and a few places I can’t tell what they do,” I said, “plus the place we were at, Health Systems, Inc. and…oh, no.”
“What?” Carm asked.
I pointed my finger at a name on the list and nodded as she gasped. “Yeah, and this.”
It was a big surprise to see the name of my special makeup manufacturer, “Girls Like Us,” listed under the business names. After I fell ill, finding a woman who not only had been infected with the Z virus like me, but had developed a whole line of fantastic, great-covering body makeup, foundation, and lip gloss had made my life tons better. I called the makeup “Ghouls Like Us” since she really understood our problems. This hit me. Hard.
“Carm, what do you think?”
My cousin hemmed and hawed. “Ugh, well, it could be a coincidence.”
“Yeah, a big coincidence.”
She remained quiet while I reasoned it out. “I saw her on some talk show a while ago. You can hardly tell she’s infected unless you know or look real close.” The disappointment threatened to drag me down. “She-she seemed so nice, so genuine. I can’t believe she’d do anything terrible.”
Carm screwed up her face in confusion. “Terrible? Like what?”
“Like steal dogs–and use them to test her makeup. I wonder…maybe it isn’t a coincidence. Look the business up, Health Systems, Inc.”
Carm scanned the list of sites that came up on her phone.
“There,” I pointed. “Go to that one.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Carm said. “It says Health Systems, a division of GLU.” She went to several other sites. “There it is, GLU, Girls Like Us, LLC. I guess it makes sense that a business with the word health in it is tied to a cosmetics firm. Nothing wrong with that, though.”
“Possibly not,” I cautioned, “but the real question still is what this health place is doing with dogs and cages in their building? Not something they want anyone to know about, I bet.”
At this point I knew t
alking to my aunt about the whole problem and my suspicions would be the best thing to do. Of course, I decided on a riskier plan of action.
“Call your mom,” I told my cousin. “Ask her if you can spend the night. I need your help.”
Carm’s eyes widened. “Help? Help with what? Oh, you’re not…we can’t go back there. You saw the security guards. Maybe the National Guard didn’t get all the zombies roaming around at night yet. I-I don’t want to run into any out there, not in the dark. We should let the police take care of it.”
I sighed. Not again. We didn’t have time for her to get all chicken on me. “We’ll be fine, Carm. We can do it. Remember what my neighbor Amelia said? Do you think the police really care about some missing dogs?”
Carm began to search on her phone. I peered over her shoulder. “What’re you looking for?”
“This.” She pointed to the web page and began scrolling down the list. “The police have to care. Look. Wisconsin has laws against dog-napping–taking a dog that doesn’t belong to you without permission–and animal cruelty, and other stuff. They have to do something if we show them what we found.” She searched in her phone. “Oh, or didn’t.”
“What?”
She showed me something fuzzy and out of focus. “I need a new phone. None of the photos came out.”
“Need a new operator is more like it,” I grumbled. “You know what that means. No arguments. We have to go back. I’ll text Jesse and Gabe to come pick us up.”
Dinner over–mine the usual liquid protein kind since I’d really gotten sick of eating all that tasteless, boring, uncooked chicken–we helped Tia with the dishes and said goodnight since she was going to bed early. I wasted no time putting our plan in motion and pulled a bunch of black clothes from the back of my closet.
“Hurry up and change,” I urged my cousin. “I have flashlights for both of us. I heard some trucks go by, so I think the Guardsmen are still patrolling. We’ll probably have to avoid them more than the Zs. Okay?”
Carm looked like she’d jump and run at the slightest noise. I hoped she’d pull herself together once we got outside.
“If there’s a security guard, one of us can distract him,” I said. “I put some hair pins in your bag, in case you need to pick a lock. And I’ve got these. Found them in the garage.” I held up a big pair of metal cutters. “Just in case. But hopefully we can find the keys. Once it’s dark, we’ll get out of here. You, ready?”
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