by Gen Griffin
“The Powers That Be tripped the automatic locking mechanisms on the cells when it became obvious that a lot of people turning into zombies.”
“They locked everyone in their apartments?”
“Sure did. Trapped everyone, really. There was no warning. They just booted up the generators and tripped the locks. The only people who didn't get trapped were those who were in the common areas. If you were in the cafeteria, the auditorium or the hospital ward then you were still free. Everyone inside the blocks was trapped there.”
“How did the people who weren't sick yet get out?”
“They haven't,” Jeb said flatly. “They're still in there. Most of them are probably zombies by now.”
“They trapped the healthy people in with the zombies?” Just the thought of it sent chills down my spine.
Jeb nodded. “I hope you weren't planning on going back to your Block.”
“I hadn't really thought about it.” Lying was becoming a habit for me. “Um, just out of curiosity, you haven't seen my Dad, have you?”
“Your Dad?” Jeb feigned surprise, but not well.
“George Augustus,” I reminded him. “Someone that I used to know told me he was locked up in the hospital ward.”
“Someone that you used to know?” Jeb looked at me curiously.
I ignored both his tone and the question. “Have you seen my Dad?”
“Maybe.”
“It was a yes or no question.”
Jeb let out a small laugh. “You never learn, do you?”
“You might be surprised by what all I've learned,” I said.
“If you'd learned anything at all from your last run in with the Powers That Be, you wouldn't have come back to the Cube.” Jeb eyed me for a long moment and then leaned against the concrete block wall. “Bud trapped your Dad in the hospital ward at the beginning of the outbreak. He was in one of the isolation rooms near the back. He might still be there. I don't know. I haven't gone into the hospital ward in a few days. There are zombies in there.”
“There are zombies everywhere,” I pointed out as my heart sunk into the pit of my stomach. I unexpectedly felt nauseous. “He's in an isolation room? You're sure?”
“Uh huh.” Jeb nodded smugly. “He probably isn't doing too well. I don't think they left him any food or water.”
“Why did Bud leave him at all?” It made no sense to me. None of it. The only thing that seemed clear was the probability that I had screwed up badly by coming into the Cube chasing the rumor that my father might still be alive.
Jeb nearly giggled. “Maybe Bud had a reason for wanting him alive?” He took another step towards me.
“I'll just bet he did.” I debated whether to try to pull my heavy sword out of its sheath and fight. Jeb hadn't attacked me, but something wasn't right here.
“How did you get into the Cube?” Jeb asked abruptly.
I frowned at him. “Does it matter?”
“If you can get in, then I can get out.” Jeb rubbed his hands together.
I couldn't see any value in lying to him. “We climbed in through one of the ventilation shafts and then up through tunnels that connect the boiler room to the basements.”
“We?”
“I had some people with me but...”
“Seth?” Jeb asked pointedly. His mood was impossible to read. One second he seemed almost pleased and the next he was bordering on despair. It crossed my mind to wonder if he really was infected with the zombie virus.
“Seth,” I confirmed. “And some of his people. We got ambushed by zombies when we were only a few hundred feet inside the tunnels.”
“You were attacked in the tunnels?” Jeb was doing a poor job of faking surprise. “What happened to your companions?”
“I don't know. I was grabbed by a former friend and told that my Dad was in the hospital ward.”
“And you came looking for him instead of staying to fight with your friends.” It wasn't a question.
“I can't abandon my Dad.” I threw my hands up helplessly. “He's all I have left in this world.”
Except Seth. You still have Seth.
I quieted the little voice in the back of my mind. I'd been stupid to run away from Seth. That much was rapidly becoming depressingly apparent. I'd thought I had it in me to be a hero, but Dad was probably dead. Now I was trapped in the Cube with hundreds of zombies.
Not to mention that Bud and his super zombies were probably on their way to destroy Ra Shet. Hell, depending on how long we'd missed them by, the city might already be in ruins.
Our rescue mission had been too late. My quest to save the world had failed miserably.
“I have to go get my Dad,” I said. “I can't afford to worry about anything else right now. I need to get my Dad and get out of here.”
“If you're leaving then I'm going with you.”
“I don't know if that's such a good idea.” I didn't really want to take Jeb with me. I'd considered him something of a friend when we'd both been Scavengers. He'd saved my life once. Still, the odds were pretty high that he was infected with the zombie virus. It was probably only a matter of time before he turned into a zombie.
“You aren't leaving me here, Pilar. Either we both go or we both die here.” Jeb put one of his hands on my shoulder. His skin felt cold through the soft fabric of my jacket. He squeezed tightly enough to let me know that his words were both promise and threat. “Besides, you're going to need my help to get your Dad out of here. If he's still alive then he probably isn't in very good shape.”
I took a deep breath and then nodded. It was easier to agree and figure out how to deal with Jeb later than it was to fight him now.
“You're right.” I pulled away from him, relieved to escape his touch. I headed back up the stairs with less caution than I had used the first time. “The sooner we get to my Dad, the sooner we can get out of here.”
Chapter 11
The hospital ward was in worse shape than the cafeteria had been. I had a distinct sense of deja vu as I led Jeb through the familiar doorway. All the patients in the hundred bed ward had turned into zombies.
Approximately half of the zombies had been attached to the bed restraints before they had turned. It was standard procedure to restrain anyone we thought was on the verge of death. Someone had tried to do their job. Approximately sixty zombies were in various stages of trying to escape their restraints. Zombies in nearly every bed were yanking, gnawing, pulling and chewing on leather straps and metal chains. The one nearest to the door had actually succeed in getting one leg loose from his chains by chewing his foot off at the ankle.
Roughly a dozen zombies were completely loose. My heart skipped a beat. I'd had this exact nightmare several times before. Seth said it was probably part of one of the prophecies. Seth. I looked to the center of the room, expecting to see him standing in the midst of all the zombies with blood dripping from his broadsword.
He wasn't there. A cold chill ran down my spine as all the zombies began to turn and look at me. Several of them started moving towards us.
“Stop!” I commanded, knowing it was useless but unable to help myself. “Leave us alone!”
The zombies charged us. For all too brief of a moment, I had the chance to see everything around me. I could see the dead bodies of several familiar hospital ward workers piled into the corners of the room. I could see the missing teeth in the mouth of a zombie that had once been the nice old man who liked to sing opera from Block C. I could see the way one of the female zombie's dress gaped open across her breasts. They were closing the distance that separated us at a terrifyingly fast pace. Running with a speed that no normal zombie possessed.
I turned and tried to run, but Jeb grabbed my arm. He shoved me towards the zombies, dragging me through the very center of the horde. The isolation rooms were at the very back of the hospital ward. The zombies almost looked surprised as we came towards them. Their surprise worked to our advantage and Jeb sprinted for the stainless steel doors th
at were visible on the far end of the room.
We were nearly to the isolation rooms when I slipped in a puddle of blood and fell, grabbing for anything that would help me stay upright. I yanked Jeb to the ground on top of me as I hit the tile floor hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. The zombies were on us in an instant.
I suddenly had a zombie in my face. Its hot breath coated my skin as its teeth snapped together less than a foot from the end of my nose.
“Stop!” I shrieked. “Get away!”
In my nightmares, the zombie had always stopped mid-motion. My nightmares were not real life. The zombie swooped down towards me, blood dripping from its teeth. It had chewed its own arm off to escape its restraints.
I rolled frantically to the side, but I didn't move fast enough. Jeb was in my way. He wasn't getting up fast enough. His long legs were tangled in mine, preventing my escape. The zombie sunk its teeth into my shoulder and I screamed. I kicked and shoved at the monster, but its teeth were embedded in my flesh.
I struck the zombie as hard as I could in the back of the head. Again and again, I struck it. The nightmare was chewing on my skin as if I were a particularly tasty morsel. The weapons I was carrying were doing me no good. I couldn't reach any of them and, even if I could have, the zombie had incapacitated my right arm.
Suddenly a second zombie fell on the first one. This one had been a woman and she bit down hard into the spine of the first zombie and took a massive chunk of meat and bone out of the monster's back.
I screamed again as the zombie biting me abruptly let go so he could focus his attention on the second zombie. It was rapidly becoming apparent, based on the second zombie's behavior, that the super zombies were cannibalistic. She was now tearing huge chunks of flesh out of the zombie that had bitten me and eating them. Blood ran down her pale face and into the neckline of her dress as she chewed.
Jeb had somehow managed to get to his feet. He grabbed me by my arm and yanked me out from underneath the zombies. I looked up at him with stunned gratitude.
“Come on,” he snapped as he yanked me to my knees and then up again until my boots were underneath me.
My shoulder should have hurt, but right now it didn't. All I could think was that, if I was going to live through the next five minutes, I needed to move now.
Three more zombies fell on the first one as I stumbled towards Jeb. Blood was running down my arm but I didn't have time to assess how bad the damage was. I had to pull myself together, and fast. The isolation rooms were no more than fifty feet away from us. I had to know if my Dad was alive or dead.
I yanked my hand free from Jeb's and began stumbling towards the back of the room again. Jeb kept pace with me as zombies rushed past us, attracted by the overwhelming smell of so much blood and raw meat. Super zombies or not, they clearly still wanted to eat flesh and didn't much care whose flesh it was.
There was a thick glass window in the front wall of each isolation room. The windows had been designed to allow the doctors to check on their patients without enter the room or disturbing the sick individual. We'd mostly used the rooms for the dying when I'd worked in the hospital ward. The isolation rooms had provided us with a safe, secure way to tell when a terminally sick patient had crossed the line between death and undead.
Terror filled me as I grasped the ledge of the first window. My mind flashed back to the moment when my mother had turned to face me through the bars of a cage, her eyes wild and her skin rotting. I sucked a deep gulp of air through my teeth and forced myself to look through the glass.
I expected the worst but the room was empty. No humans. No zombies. Just a ruined hospital bed, turned on its side.
“Pilar, hurry up.” Jeb was standing beside me. He tugged on my hurt arm again. I followed his gaze to where the zombies were beginning to get bored tearing each other to bits.
“I have to find my Dad.”
I forced myself to move to the next isolation room. Empty. I didn't know whether to be relieved or terrified as I moved across the hallway to the third room.
Jeb made another grab for my arm. “We're going to get eaten. Come on.”
“I can't leave my Dad,” I protested as I reached the third isolation room. Two zombies. Lots of zombie pieces. Neither zombie had been my Dad.
There was only one isolation room to go.
Jeb sighed as I reached the window that separated the hallway from the fourth and final isolation room. “He's not here, Pilar.”
“What?” I didn't know if I'd heard him right. The fourth isolation room, like the first two, was empty.
“Your Dad was never here. I don't know what happened to him. He's either dead or being held captive in Bud's camp outside the city walls.”
“You lied to me.” I wasn't exactly surprised as I turned to face him.
“Bud wants you. He thinks he can torture you to make Seth talk. He left me here so that I could trap you for him.”
I opened my mouth and then realized that arguing wasn't going to do me any good. Jeb had laid an effective trap for me and I'd fallen into it.
Jeb stood in front of me with a strange smile on his lips. “If I can bring you to Bud, then he'll forgive me. He said so.”
“Forgive you?” I wasn't sure what he had done and I didn't really care. I needed to get away from Jeb before he could deliver me to Bud.
“I made a mistake,” Jeb acknowledged. “It was right after I got back to the Cube from our last Scavengers mission. I had an opportunity to-.”
I wasn't listening to a word he was saying. I used my uninjured arm to grab hold of the sword by my side. I swung up in a wide, clumsy arc and caught Jeb upside the head with the flat side of the blade. It was a lousy blow and it did little more than knock him slightly off balance.
“You bitch!” Jeb caught the sword and ripped it loose from my grip. I didn't fight to hang onto the weapon. I wasn't any good with it anyways.
Instead, I ran.
Jeb had never worked in the hospital ward, so he hadn't known about the small room at the very back of the supply closet. The room that most of us pretended wasn't there unless we had to go into it. It took all of my courage to yank open that stubborn old door. There weren't any zombies here. Why would there be? Most people in the Cube had no idea that there was a chute that connected the hospital ward to the incinerators three stories below. The chute had been used to ensure zombie-contaminated body parts and fluids were destroyed as quickly as possible. In theory, immediate burning with minimal handling reduced the likelihood that hospital ward staff would get infected.
The incinerators were no longer operating. It was one of the things I had noticed when I'd been helping Seth scout out the Cube before our horribly failed rescue mission.
Jeb appeared in the doorway of the storage room and lunged for me. His eyes were burning with rage. With no time to consider the repercussions of my actions, I dove headfirst into the incinerator chute.
Chapter 12
The fall down the incinerator chute wasn't as swift or efficient as I'd hoped it would be. The chute bent at funny angles and I got stuck several times before I reached the bottom, bleeding and bruised.
I'd never been so glad to see the sunshine above me as I stumbled out of the cold, ashy incinerator and into the exterior yard of the Cube. The brickyard, as it had once been known, had been closed off to the residents of the Cube almost two years earlier after a nasty fire that had killed a number of people and severely damaged the exterior wall of the building.
I had no doubt that Jeb had thrown himself down the chute after me. My saving grace was that Jeb was significantly bigger than I was. I'd had a difficult time wiggling through the narrower, tighter parts of the chute, but I was willing to bet that he was having a much worse time. Long legs and broad shoulders weren't always helpful features. If he'd been as big as Gauge then he never would have fit at all and I would have been safe.
As it stood now, I wasn't safe. I'd only delayed the inevitable fight for my life by a
few minutes. Still, I'd bought time and I needed to use it to my advantage.
Running was out of the question. My knee was bleeding and my ankle had been twisted badly during my tumble down the chute. The zombie bite on my shoulder was starting to throb. It felt like the wound went all the way down to my bones. I was hurt, bleeding and wouldn't be able to run far enough fast enough to evade Jeb.
I quickly took stock of the weapons I had left. My sword was gone and so was one of my knives. The other, a long thing that Vera had instructed me to wear strapped on the outside of my thigh, was still securely in its holster. I hadn't drawn the weapon earlier because it was a real pain in the butt to get loose from it's holster.
The knife was easily eight inches long and sharp as sin. My fingers fumbled badly as I unclipped the snap that held the hilt in place. My hand trembled as I assessed my position. Jeb would come out of the chute at the exact same place that I had. He'd be disoriented by the combination of the fall and the sunlight.
If I were going to give him a fair fight, I could stay right where I was at and wait for him. He would undoubtedly come after me. The old Pilar, the girl who had left the Cube so naive and trusting just a few months ago, would have stood her ground and fought the fair fight. Hopelessly outclassed and hurt, she would have lost the fair fight too.
In a moment of perfect and unexpected clarity, I understood why Seth stayed so exasperated with me. In the multiple choice test of life, I tended to select option A every damn time. Regardless of whether or not it was to my advantage.
I'd maintained one -and only one- goal, regardless of what else had happened to me. Despite every horrible thing I'd learned about the Cube, Ra Shet, the meat market, flesh brokers and the super zombies, I'd still stubbornly focused all of my attentions on finding my parents. I hadn't been able to see any other course of action for myself. Except suddenly, I could. Suddenly, I could see all the other options I'd had along the way. I could see my mistakes. I could see how I could have avoided them. The lessons that Seth had been trying to teach me were now painfully clear. I'd thought he was cruel, but the truth was simply that he was a survivor and he'd wanted me to be one too. He'd been trying to teach me how to tilt the odds into my own favor. Now, I understood.