“Oh, I’d say about ten miles across,” Eric said, “give or take.”
“Are you sure about that? That’s massive, and it’s not something that could be put together quickly.”
“Well,” Eric thought about it, “maybe more like five miles?”
“Let’s try something else,” Jack said. “Is it about the same distance as the 7-11 is from the HandiMart?”
“Oh,” a look of realization came over Eric, “a little farther than that, but not much.”
“It’s about a mile and a half across,” Jack said to Snake, “maybe less.”
“Glad you’re here to interpret, Jack,” Snake said. “Something that size could actually exist in the city.”
“How big was the place you saw?” Jack asked Snake.
“Hard to tell,” Snake said. “It was really foggy that day, so we couldn’t see the whole thing. The wall we followed was probably only a half-mile, but that doesn’t mean much. It wasn’t necessarily square.”
Eric said, “The compound wasn’t square. The walls seemed kind of random, you know, like it was an odd shape.”
“But you said they were made of rocks, like castle walls?” Jack asked.
“Seemed like it,” Eric said, thinking. “I’m not sure I ever saw them up close, actually.”
“Okay, so it could be the same place. But wouldn’t you have recognized Lansing when you looked over the wall?” Snake asked.
“It’s not like I spend a lot of time driving around the city,” Eric said, defensively.
“That’s right,” Jack sighed. “When you do leave the house, it’s on a bicycle, so it probably would look foreign to you.”
“What about the hills?” Snake asked. “You said this place had hills, parks and lakes.”
“It seemed like there were hills,” Eric said. “I know it wasn’t easy walking up the streets.”
Jack stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Let me ask you something. Was it just as hard to walk back?”
Eric’s silence gave Jack his answer.
“Okay, so no hills.”
“There were some big houses around it that were pretty nice,” Eric said. “I remember that. I asked Henry why they weren’t inside the walls, and he said they were older homes, and not quite up to the standards of the community.”
Snake shook his head. “This guy is really something.”
“He’s used to having the very best of everything,” Eric said.
“Hey, do you remember seeing a fenced-off area outside the walls?” Snake asked, suddenly.
“Sure, that’s where they keep the fuel tanker,” Eric said.
“That’s it! There was a big tanker behind chain-link.”
“Right. I saw that when we took off.”
“That’s our place,” Snake said. “I’m sure of it.”
“It’s got to be,” Jack said pulling out his notepad. “Okay, Eric, we need you to describe the layout of this place in detail. Please leave out anything about you being a god or a king.”
Eric replied but the doughnuts packing the inside of his mouth made his words unintelligible.
“Swallow first, please,” Jack said in disgust.
Eric chewed for a moment and swallowed.
“I worked for Henry, the old guy I told you about,” Eric started. “He rules the whole colony. He says there are a lot more of those walled communities around the world.”
“Interesting,” Jack said.
Eric added. “These people are powerful. They’re everywhere.”
“So what kind of defenses do they have?”
“They have some sort of a militia,” Eric answered. “Some are military, or I guess they’d be ex-military, but most are civilians. They weren’t trained really well. My platoon in Iraq could have . . .”
“Eric,” Jack cut him off, “you were never in Iraq. Just answer the questions honestly, if that’s possible.”
“Anyway,” Eric continued, slightly embarrassed, “I saw a lot of uniformed militia types roaming around.”
“Do you have an idea where they’d be keeping Lindsey and Dr. Doune?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know about Dr. Doune, but if Lindsey’s been assigned to Lee, she’s probably somewhere on Henry’s property.”
“Assigned to Lee?” Snake asked, not liking the way that sounded.
Eric shrugged.
“Can you draw us a map?” Jack asked, sliding the pen and paper over to Eric.
By the time Eric was done, there was almost as much chocolate as ink on the paper, but at least they had a decent idea of the layout of the compound.
“I think that’s all we need for now,” Jack said.
Eric stood and tapped the radio clipped to his belt. “You know where to find me if you need me.” He stuffed the last doughnut into his mouth.
As he left the room, Theresa met him at the door.
“There you are, Eric,” she said. “The kids are waiting for those doughnuts. Did you get sidetracked?”
“Sorry,” he said wiping crumbs from his mouth, “those guys just finished them off.” He nodded his head toward the men still sitting at the table. “They’re pigs.”
~*^*~
~51~
St. Mary’s Hospital, Lansing
“You get back in that bed,” Amelia told Wombat, shaking her finger at him. “Right now!”
The Australian muttered something under his breath.
“I’ll call Snake if I have to,” the little RN said. “You’ll be in a buttload of trouble.”
“Buttload?” Wombat asked, not sure he’d heard her right.
“It means ‘a lot’ of trouble,” she said. “Snake told me.”
“Trying to leave again?” Dr. Sharma asked, stepping into the room.
“No fair ganging up on me,” Wombat said. “I’m weak right now.”
“That’s why you need to be in bed,” Amelia pointed out.
“Or a wheelchair,” Dr. Sharma added.
“The guys would never let me hear the end of it.”
“It’s the only way you’re leaving this room,” she said. “You don’t want to hit your head while you still have a concussion, and I know you’re still dizzy, aren’t you?”
Wombat took a moment to reply. “All right. You win. I’ll take the wheelchair.”
“Good. I’ll call one of your friends to come get you.”
“Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t want them to see me wearing this thing.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Amelia asked, tugging on his hospital gown.
“Hey!” he said, pulling it tighter around him.
Amelia grinned and went to get the wheelchair.
A few minutes later, Fish showed up. As Wombat had guessed, the other biker laughed at the sight of his friend.
“Nice outfit you’ve got there.”
“Just get me to my room so I can change, all right?” Wombat said, taking a seat in the wheelchair.
“I want you back here in a few hours for your breathing treatment and X-ray,” Dr. Sharma said. “You still have a hole in your lung.”
“I’ll be back,” Wombat said, not looking happy about it.
As soon as they were out the door, he asked Fish, “When are we going after Lindsey?”
“You aren’t,” Fish said. “Snake made that pretty clear. They were still trying to figure out where she is, last I heard.”
“I want to be there when you go.”
“You aren’t in any condition to be out there,” Fish said, wheeling him to the elevator. “You heard the doc. You’ve got a hole in your lung.”
~*~
“Eric had this information all along while we were out there searching for this place?” Wolf asked.
“I’m going to kill him,” Moose said, standing up.
“Not if I get to him first,” Wolf said, moving toward the door.
“Moose, Wolf, take a seat,” Snake said.
“Do you know how many close calls we had out by that base?”
Wolf asked. “That place was crawling with the dead, and we risked our lives searching out there because that moron was too stupid or egotistical to give us some straight answers!”
“Look, I know that you’re all frustrated,” Jack said. “I am, too. Keep in mind, though, Eric didn’t withhold the information intentionally. He’s just got kind of a warped perspective on things that made it difficult for us to weed out the facts and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Please, let’s just move on now that we’re fairly certain where Lindsey and Dr. Doune are. You can kill Eric later.”
“We know what this guy, Henry, is capable of,” Keith said. “He killed Hawk, and if he’d had his way, Wombat would be dead, too. I don’t think they’ll hurt Dr. Doune, since he can be useful to them, but who knows what they’ll do to Lindsey. I don’t care what the rest of you do, I’m going in there.”
“Dude, I admire your enthusiasm, but we’ve got to think of everyone else in the hospital. We don’t know what kind of firepower these guys have. If what Eric says is true, they could blow us off the map in a heartbeat,” Snake said.
“I highly doubt they would do that,” Jack said. “If they don’t know who’s immune yet, they won’t chance an all out attack. They obviously need this person alive.”
“I don’t see why you can’t tell us who it is,” one of the bikers said.
“The less people who know, the better,” Snake said. “You know I trust you guys, but we think we may have a mole in the building, and something could slip out accidentally in front of this person. We just can’t risk it.”
“I say we send these guys a message,” Moose said. “We can’t just have them come in here whenever they damn well please and have their way with us. We’ve got guns, we’ve got explosives. It’s time to draw a line.”
“I’m with Moose,” Keith said. “We’re holding the ace now, and it’s time to call their bluff.”
“You got a point there,” Snake said, rubbing his beard. “It’s not like pissing them off is going to make a difference. Maybe if we make an impression on them they’ll think twice about knocking on our door, uninvited.”
“As long as we don’t leave the hospital vulnerable for too long, just get in and get out, you have my blessing,” Jack said.
“Anyone got any ideas on how to do this?” Snake asked.
“Yeah, Boss,” Moose said, “I say we light a truck on fire and ram that tanker. Those walls aren’t made to withstand an explosion like that. They’ll tumble like dominoes.”
Snake shook his head. “Moose, there’s a lot of innocent people behind those walls. We don’t want a bunch of casualties. We just want to get Xena and Dr. Doom out of there and send these guys a message.”
“You know,” Jack interjected, “Moose may have something there.”
“You can’t be serious,” Snake shot Jack a look of surprise.
“Not the part about blowing up the tanker,” Jack said, “but we have some of that blasting material your guys found in that DOT building. If you strap some to the front of a pickup, just enough to punch a small hole in the wall, you could create some concern on that side of the fortress. If we can believe Eric, he says Henry’s place is on the opposite side of the community. You could have a small group waiting over there.”
“I like it,” Snake said, pulling his beard, deep in thought. “When everyone runs to see what the fuss is all about, we go in. We just need to figure out how to get the truck close enough to the wall to blow a hole in it without getting shot, or blown up.”
“If we stay away from that tanker, we should be okay,” Wolf said. “We can point the truck toward the wall from about a block away, jam the accelerator, and slam it into gear. We’ll have it done before they know what hit them.”
“You know,” Sparky joined in the conversation, “I could unhook the air bags and make it so the sensors trigger the blasting agents.”
“Good thinking,” Snake said.
“So when do we go?” Keith asked.
“We need to work out all the details so this goes as smoothly as possible,” Snake said. “Let’s plan on leaving at first light tomorrow. I’m going to go talk to Wombat and see if he knows anything else that might help.”
“Don’t tell him when you’re leaving, Boss,” Fish warned. “He wants to go.”
“He ain’t going,” Snake said. “If I have to, I’ll get Dr. Sharma to give him something to knock him out. He ain’t in any condition, physically or mentally, to be out there with us.”
~*~
“How you feeling?” Snake asked Wombat, surprised to see him in regular clothing instead of the hospital gown.
“Like I’ve been run over by a truck,” the Australian said. He was a mass of bruises, and he had his arm in a sling.
“That’s how you look, too,” Snake admitted. “I see Dr. Sharma finally got a cast on you.”
Wombat frowned, looking down at his arm. “She tricked me. I came back for my breathing treatment, and she knocked me out and did it while I was asleep.”
“It’s the only way I could do it,” the doctor said, arms crossed. “You have not been a good patient, Wombat.”
“You could have just wrapped it. You said it wasn’t a bad break.”
She shook her head. “You would have ended up making it worse.”
“Look at it this way, dude,” Snake said. “The flesh-eaters ain’t going to be chewing through that.”
Wombat looked at his arm thoughtfully. “It might make a good weapon, too.”
“You need to rest!” Dr. Sharma said. “You cannot go out and fight zombies if you want to heal!”
“I need to go find Lindsey.”
“I give up,” Dr. Sharma said, throwing her arms up as she walked out of the room.
“Dude, it ain’t going to happen,” Snake said. “I’m taking a small team with me when I go in there, and you’re not going to be part of it.”
“What the hell, mate?” Wombat said. “I need to be there!”
“You need to worry about healing,” Snake said. “We’re going to be climbing over that wall, and there’s no way you’re doing that with busted ribs, a broken arm and a punctured lung.”
“You know what it feels like to be sitting here doing nothing?” Wombat asked. “Eric came up a while ago to talk to me, and he told me that Lindsey’s probably been assigned to be Reynolds’ wife! I can’t stop thinking about that. It’s making me crazy. And who knows what that psychotic old man might do to her if she doesn’t give him the information he wants.”
“I don’t think Reynolds would let him hurt her, but I agree that the sooner we get them out of there, the better.”
“Eric also told me there was blood on the roof and that someone heard a gunshot. None of the guys will tell me what happened.”
“They don’t know,” Snake said, making a mental note to have a talk with Eric later. “Nobody knows. There was a single shot fired, and there was some blood.”
“How much?”
“I didn’t measure it, dude,” Snake said.
“None of us had guns,” Wombat said, “and Hawk and I had already gone over the roof before the shot was fired. If it wasn’t one our guys doing the shooting, it almost had to be Lindsey who was hit.”
“Look, if they’d killed her, they would have left her body,” Snake pointed out. “She must have been alive when they took off.”
“But she was shot,” Wombat said.
Snake hesitated before nodding. “We think it’s likely. Look, we’re going to go as soon as we possibly can, and you’re going to have to sit tight. We’ll bring her back. In the meantime, you need to tell me anything you can that might help.”
“I’m not sure it’ll be helpful, but I remember more than I did before.”
“Okay, start at the beginning,” Snake said, “from when you went to the roof the other morning. Don’t leave anything out.”
“All right,” Wombat said, telling Snake everything he remembered.
Snake listened c
arefully, taking in everything the other biker said and sometimes stopping to ask questions.
“Something else, though I’m not sure it matters,” Wombat said, after he’d told the whole story.
“What?”
“When Henry told his men to throw Hawk over, most of them looked surprised, and one of them even questioned the order. The old man stuck a gun in his face and told him to do it. This one red-haired guy was grinning when they threw Hawk over, but some of the others looked a little shaken up. I had the feeling that none of them knew it was going to happen. Even Reynolds seemed shocked. I had the feeling that none of this was planned, and the old man just reacted when we wouldn’t give him the information he wanted.”
“That fits with what Eric’s told us about him,” Snake said. “The dude seems to be a bit of a nutcase.”
“He was like a kid having a tantrum.”
Snake thought about that and realized that it made the man even more dangerous.
“Do you remember falling?” Snake asked.
“I do now,” Wombat said. “It happened fast. I had time to shift my position a bit, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
“Shift your position?”
“All I could think of when I started to go over was that I was going to bang heads with one of the other guys, and it was going to kill me. I kind of twisted on the way down so my head wasn’t near either of theirs. I guess it worked.”
~*~
Lansing Compound
When Lee entered the library, Loto was already there with Henry.
“Reynolds, we’ve had an interesting development,” Henry said.
Lee remained silent, waiting for the old man to continue.
“It seems that our friends at the hospital have figured out our location and are planning a little rescue mission.”
“I’m not surprised,” Lee said. “I assumed they’d try to find Doune and Lindsey.”
“I didn’t think they’d succeed,” Henry admitted. “Apparently the intruders whom we scared off a while back were people from the hospital. The guard recognized Lindsey when he saw her.”
Dead, But Not For Long (Book 2): Pestilence and Promise Page 46