“Yes. Picking the berries helps provide the little ones with some entertainment.”
Hunter nods slightly while imagining Polly running up and down aisles of blueberry bushes with a bushel basket in hand. He would offer to carry it for her, but she would flatly refuse, insisting she could do it herself—until she tried unsuccessfully to lift it. Then Casey would intervene to smooth everything over.
He shakes his head a little. All this rich food and comfortable setting is filling his head with idyllic visions. None of those visions can become reality until he finds Casey and Polly. He finishes his pie and then leans back in his chair. “I’m glad I told that tailor to give me the loose fit.” He smacks his belly for emphasis. “That is the best meal I’ve had in years.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. I can’t promise you steak and blueberry pie every night, but those who are loyal to the church are rewarded handsomely.”
“I can see that.” Hunter gets to his feet. “If you guys don’t mind, I’d like to get some fresh air.”
“Of course. We have some matters to discuss,” Major Friese says.
“I bet you do,” Hunter grumbles to himself on his way out. He’s sure he’s the matter they have to discuss, whether to allow him to be part of their organization or not. It certainly does have some fringe benefits, but at what cost?
He stands by the front entrance as Sylvia instructed. He hopes he isn’t too late for their rendezvous. Maybe she has already gone home—
“Hey there, handsome,” she says from next to him.
He jumps a little and then shakes his head. “How did you do that? Are you a ninja or something?”
“Sure, I’m the first ninja stylist in the world.” She puts a hand on his arm. “I hope you don’t mind taking a little trip?”
“Of course not. I’ve been looking forward to seeing more of the city.”
“Good. Our ride is over there.” She gestures to a city bus that still has ads for long-extinct TV shows on it. “Church guys don’t usually ride with servants, but I’ve spread the word that you’re cool.”
“Thanks.”
He follows Sylvia onto the bus, hoping he might find Casey there. He doesn’t see her among the dozens of women dressed in uniforms for maids, waitresses, and laundresses. In a way that makes him happy as he doesn’t like to think of Casey doing anything that mundane.
Sylvia motions for him to sit at the front. She drops onto the seat next to him. The bus doors hiss shut and then the driver—also a woman—jerks the bus into gear. “Don’t worry, our place isn’t far from here.”
“Is this bugged?”
“Not so far as I know. Probably too hard with the engine noise.”
“So what is it you wanted to tell me?”
“We’ve been working on a plan to get out of here. Having someone inside the church is going to help immensely. Let me give you the lay of the land. They do most of their business in the old LDS office building in Temple Square. We think that’s where they’re keeping the threes. They tell you about their system to rate us women?”
“Yes. They sized you all up like horses at an auction.”
“Exactly. We don’t know what they’re doing with the threes, but from what we can tell, they’re being held down in the basement. They won’t even let us go down there to dust, so we can’t be sure. Anyway, a church officer could get us down there to find out.
“The other thing is the kids. The older ones went with the threes, but the younger ones they have on the Utah campus. They’re indoctrinating them, making them into good little servants of the church.”
Hunter’s fists clench as he imagines Polly being forced to sit in a classroom while some church officer fills her head with lies. “These guys sound as bad as Nazis.”
“That food doesn’t taste so good now, does it?”
“Not really. So what’s the plan?”
“We get word to the ones where you used to work. They have more freedom to move around. All we need to do is get a few of the zeeb cages open and everything will start going to hell. While the church is trying to quell that, we’ll get out the threes and the kids and escape.”
Hunter shakes his head. “It won’t work. Those zeebs are rigged to blow. They break out of the cages and the guards will push the button to take their heads off. No riot, no chaos, just a lot of undead to clean up.”
“Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But you have the right idea. We need a distraction. Then we can rescue your friends and the kids. I don’t suppose any of you know how to fly a plane?”
“I can ask, but I doubt it.”
“Then maybe you can take one of the pilots for a cargo plane hostage. If I can get to a fighter, I’ll fly cover for you.”
“And where would we go?”
“Davis-Monthan. It’s in Tucson. My friend runs the place. He probably wouldn’t let us stay, but we could at least stop over to top off the tanks. Those cargo planes have a lot of range, so we could go just about anywhere.”
“The question is: where is anywhere safe?”
“Yeah. Look, my ‘baptism’ isn’t for three days, so we’ve got time to come up with something. You talk to your people and I’ll do what I can. We can compare notes tomorrow and the next day.”
“Good idea.” She shakes her head. “Here I thought the Sky Ghost was just a dumb fighter jock.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
The bus comes to a stop in the parking lot of a seedy motel similar to the one he was staying in by the airport. There’s a second bus in the parking lot letting off another group of women. These are wearing tight blouses, low skirts, and high heels. Hunter gets to his feet when he sees one of these women.
He pounds down the steps of the bus. The driver gets the doors opened just enough for him to squeeze through sideways. The woman doesn’t notice him as she starts to trudge towards a set of stairs. He seizes her around the waist of her tight green blouse and then hefts her clear out of her green stiletto heels.
She squeals with surprise until he spins her around to face him. Casey doesn’t manage to get any words out before he kisses her on the lips with the passion from two months of waiting. Much sooner than he would like, he has to set her down. Her cheeks are turning bright red while there are tears sparkling in her blue eyes.
“Hunter! Oh my God! I don’t believe it!”
“I don’t either.” He runs a hand through the black hair that’s almost down to her waist now. “What do they have you doing?”
Her cheeks go redder. “I’m a secretary for one of their officers. A Major Friese.”
“Him? He’s the guy who recruited me.” Hunter’s fists clench. It’s going to be really hard not to smash Friese’s face in the next time they meet. “Has he…done anything to you?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Hunter.”
“No, it’s all right. You didn’t have a choice. And you probably thought I was dead.”
“Of course not. We know all about the Sky Ghost.” She flashes him a shy smile. “You’re just about the biggest celebrity there is right now. You and the reverend.”
“Lucky me. I always wanted to be famous.” He looks around the motel. “Which of these rooms is yours?”
“I share one with another girl. But we can’t go there. They could hear us. We should be safe out here with all the engine noise.”
“They bug your rooms too?”
“They don’t take chances. They’re very smart. Listen, Hunter—”
“Call me Mac. Mac Malone. That’s the alias I’m using.”
She smiles at him again. “A secret identity? You really are a superhero.”
“I guess that makes you Lois Lane then.”
“I’m not exactly a reporter.” Her smile fades as she says, “You have to stay away from me. Not until we can find a way out of here. If they find out about us, they’ll kill Polly.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“The first thing they told me was if I tr
ied to run, they’d kill her. No matter what happens, you have to get her out of here. You have to get her someplace safe. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Thank you.” She gets on her toes to kiss him a lot gentler than he kissed her. “The buses are getting ready to leave. You better go.”
“Casey—”
“Just go, please. The next time you see me, you’ll get me out of here. You’ll scoop me up and fly us away like Superman.”
“You got it.” They kiss again briefly and then he says, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Then she’s gone and he’s alone again.
Chapter 21
The plan Hunter and Sylvia work out isn’t all that great to his way of thinking. The idea is to use the buses the church provides to transport the servants to pick up the children from the university. While the buses go to the university, Hunter would find a way to sneak outside to get to his Harrier. Then he could use it to provide cover for the buses as they head to the airport.
There is still a lot that could go wrong with it. The first problem is for the servants to get weapons so they can rescue the kids. Then there’s the problem that while Sylvia, Casey, and the others are brave enough, they aren’t trained soldiers. Facing off against experienced mercenaries like the church guards will be a big challenge.
There’s also the problem of the threes. Hunter and Sylvia had to table discussion on that until he could recon where they’re being held. He has hoped Major Friese or someone else would show him to the LDS office building in Temple Square, but he has spent most of his time at the temple itself to be indoctrinated with the church’s thinking.
Their philosophy seems simple enough. God sent the zombie plague to wipe most of humanity out. It’s the duty of the church to ensure that only the “pure” are left to reclaim the earth once the zeebs are eliminated. While the church states that God will cure the plague once only the pure are left, the church believes in helping that along by wiping out the unbelievers.
It all sounds familiar to Hunter; the Crusades, the Nazis, and al-Qaeda all preached similar beliefs. As far as Hunter is concerned, this reverend is just exploiting the outbreak to make himself the ruler of the new world. The way things are, he might be able to do it. That fleet of Russian planes and the caged zeebs certainly gives him an advantage. More than that, no one outside “Utopia” is organized to fight against a threat like this. There are only scattered pockets of civilization like Davis-Monthan or Mile High.
Hunter knows why NWAC had to be destroyed: they were too successful. By liberating Seattle and threatening to do the same for Portland, they were becoming too big and too well-organized. In time they might have been able to challenge the church’s hold on Utah. Seeing the church’s use of slave labor, Hunter knows he and General George could never have sat by to let “Utopia” continue. So the church had launched a preemptive strike and now all Hunter can do is avenge his fallen comrades and rescue as many of the survivors as he can.
But first he has to survive the “baptism.” No one has explained much more about it than he has already been told. All he knows is tomorrow at noon he’ll be in the football stadium of the University of Utah. Most of the church will be there to watch as he fights some poor bastard. Whoever wins then has to kill the zeeb of the loser. Then he has to slather the zeeb blood on himself to prove himself worthy.
It’s a completely ridiculous scenario, but Hunter knows it’s how the church manages to keep its control. It weeds out those who might be principled enough to not have the stomach to kill an innocent person, leaving only the fanatics. Hunter is no fanatic and yet he has to go through with it if he wants to find the threes and rescue the survivors. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few as that Star Trek movie said.
For now all Hunter can do is sit in his room and go over the rough plans in his mind. Things are certain to go wrong with a plan like that: a bus could break down, he might not be able to get out of the city quick enough, the Harrier might be gone, and so forth. He wishes he had a different plan, but nothing is coming to him. More information on the church’s operations would be helpful, but the only way to get that information is from the inside.
There’s a knock on his door. He opens it to find Sylvia there. “Hey. Thought you might want a little shave before tomorrow. That way you’ll be a good-looking corpse.”
“Funny.” He steps aside so she can come in. He sits down on the office chair to let her get to work. “Find out anything new?”
“Not really. The drivers are definitely with us. Of course a lot of people are wondering if you can deliver what you said about the plane.”
“I left it outside the city. The only question is if they’ve found it.”
“See, that’s the problem. We’re leaving a lot up to chance.”
“Once I’m in the church, I can probably go outside and make sure the Harrier is still there. I can throw a tarp over it or cover it with branches or something to conceal it better.”
“The real reason I’m here is your girl wanted to give you a message.” Hunter lets out a gasp of surprise as Sylvia bends down to kiss him on the mouth. She puts a lot of passion into it, but he pushes her back.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry. She wanted to wish you luck. And to tell you to be careful. I’m sure you don’t need reminding of all that, but it’s good to let you know she’s thinking of you. You sure got lucky there. She’s like a young me.”
“I’ll try not to hold that against her.”
“You watch it, buster, or you’re not going to make it to that baptism tomorrow.”
“Did she have any other messages—verbal ones?”
“No. That was pretty much it. When you get in that arena tomorrow, you just remember what’s at stake: that pretty lady and her daughter. That’ll get you through it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
She finishes with the shave and a very brief trim and then starts to pack her things. “I’m just glad it’s you and not me going to be in that arena.”
“You couldn’t do it?”
“I’ve killed zeebs, but not real people. But then I’m not a soldier. I wasn’t in the war or anything.”
“Right. I’m a soldier,” Hunter mumbles. After Sylvia has gone, he sits on his bed again. He shot down a lot of planes during the brief World War III. With how furious the action was, he has no idea how many of the pilots escaped their planes. He doesn’t know how many men he has actually killed. But it’s a lot different up in the air, where you can’t really see your opponent, than it is to actually be in an arena, facing someone in the flesh.
Sylvia’s right about one thing: he has to focus on Casey and Polly. Their survival depends on his own tomorrow. He has to do whatever it takes to save them. He let them down once; he’s not going to do it again.
With this thought in mind, he falls into a fitful sleep.
***
He’s too nervous to eat much at breakfast that morning. The toast and coffee is still better than anything he could get outside of Utopia, especially with the real butter on the toast. Major Friese watches him nibble the toast and smiles. “Not hungry, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t think I could keep much down.”
“Nervous? I suppose that’s to be expected. It’s a big day for you, after all. A graduation of sorts.”
“That is one way to think of it.”
“I wouldn’t be too nervous. This fight should be no problem for one of your talents.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
“I remember my baptism. The man they chose for me was a very large black man. He probably could have crushed my skull with his bare hands.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited for the brute to charge and then like a matador I stepped aside to stab him through the neck with an ice pick.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
“As I’m sure you know, the secret is
to find your opponent’s weakness. Once you know that, the rest is just execution.”
“Right. I’m more used to getting something in my sights and pulling the trigger. I was lousy in my hand-to-hand training.”
“Then you might have a problem today, my friend.”
“Let’s hope not.”
Once Major Friese has finished his far more elaborate breakfast, they retire to the lounge, where the major hands Hunter a cigar. “These are a little delicacy I sometimes allow myself. Real Cubans, of course. There’s no embargo to worry about now.” They share a laugh at that. Hunter lets Major Friese light the cigar. He starts to cough violently almost immediately. “This must be your first time with one of these.”
“Yes. I smoked in high school occasionally, but nothing like this.”
“It’s not much different, only bigger.”
“Right.” After a few tries, Hunter manages to take a puff on the cigar without coughing. He blows out a cloud of blue smoke that hangs in the air a moment before dissipating. He motions to a no-smoking sign posted on a wall. “Guess anti-smoking laws don’t apply either.”
“I think we have much more to worry about than secondhand smoke.”
“You’re probably right.” If he doesn’t get his head in the game, Hunter isn’t going to live long enough for secondhand smoke to kill him. The nicotine from the cigar does help to relax him a little, though not enough to ease the knots in his stomach. “I don’t suppose you could give me a hint about who I’m fighting?”
“I do not choose the combatant. They assure me it will be an equal match. That’s all I know.”
“Well, that’s something. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we could do this in the air, but then I suppose the other guy would just fly away, right?”
“Yes. And it would be impossible for you to turn him.”
“Some things are better to do with your own hands, right?”
“Indeed, Lieutenant. If it helps, just think of what will happen once you are victorious. You will be able to stay in Utopia permanently. I’ve already lined up a job for you on my staff. I think you would be a great asset.”
Army of the Damned (Sky Ghost #1) Page 19