She licked her lips, cleared her throat, and gave her reply.
Lake City was nothing like Junction. There was no wall, no sprawling town of buildings, no chickens wandering in the streets or endless gardens. Lake City was a converted hospital complex turned into a city within a city, and unlike us, they still had electricity.
In a way I guess it made sense, plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms, a cafeteria and extensive amount of medical supplies. From what China Lynn had told us-funny how much someone starts talking with a full belly of rations-the place had been a huge ‘go green’ initiative before the outbreak. It had geothermal lines and solar panels, self-contained water system, all the features that let them live large when the rest of us went back in a time loop. I was momentarily jealous, not for the lighting or running water, but for heat in the winter and AC in the summer. Refrigerators and Microwaves. Hell, even a hairdryer.
Sure she told me this brought its own slew of problems, they had to do runs for light bulbs, find Freon. Deal with maintenance to systems we hadn’t given a thought in a decade. From what China told us, the first floor was largely unused throughout the medical complex, they had skywalks connecting the buildings and an overzealous fear of walkers invading the ground floor. Along those lines, most stairwells had been blocked or destroyed off ground level. The hospital had two basement levels, one wing used for storage, the other was burned and highly damaged. Not many people ventured down there unless they needed to use the shoots to get garbage out of the building. Needless to say, there wasn’t much waste to dispose of with the internal cycling systems in full swing.
Aside from the main building the series of connecting towers once used for private clinics and testing procedures had been given the name T1,T2,T3. The upper floors of T1 were occupied by the vampires, T2 was primary agriculture and T3 was storage and additional housing.
T1 was our goal.
At the edge of downtown, hunkered down in an old department store employee break room we came up with ‘the plan’. Which, the more we covered ‘the plan’ the more it felt like a military counter terror op than a rescue mission. I suppose that was part Rylie’s no bullshit leadership and part Scav’s survivalist mindset.
“We need to go through main housing and find Lex first once we get inside.” China muttered, taking a drink from a dusty bottle of water we'd managed to pry out of the vending machine.
“Who’s Lex?” Suspicion evident in Rylie's tone.
“A friend with access keys. She can get us where we need to be.”
“How do you know you can trust her?” Rylie asked, brows dipped in a sharp v.
“How do you know you can trust me?” China snapped back, “its my damned city, I want those blood sucking bastards out the door more than all of you assholes, so get over it. We do it my way or I don’t help.”
“You so much as blink wrong and I’m going to put a bullet between your eyes.” Rylie drawled, his dark eyes looming over the blonde.
“Lex is solid, her sister was one of the first Zhang... she’ll be with us to the bitter end.” China directed towards me, flat out ignoring Rylie at this point.
Rylie stepped in front of her line of sight, putting his face inches from the girls. "Your word carries about as much weight as bird shit on a car window, sorry china doll but you're going to have to give us more than that before I consider a damned thing that comes out of your mouth." My eyes widened slightly, reminding myself to never get on the bad side of captain hardass.
“Fine. You want deets? Madeline Cannon was a happy kid. Course she’d seen her Dad go south early on, an ER doctor who treated some of the first bite wounds to hit the hospital. Didn’t take long till one of those pronounced dead woke up and came at Dr. Cannon. Lex was working at her residency at the time, happened to be in the building after picking Maddie up from soccer practice. Excuse me, I’m getting off topic." She paused, taking a deep breath. "Despite all that, the blood and the death that is, Maddie came through happy. She got into medical and farming, grew up tall. Tall and pretty. One of those rosy cheeked girls that never needed make up, eyes bright as the sun. When she went with Zhang, she went willingly. Was happy to help so the rest of us would be safe." China's shoulders hunched, her eyes watering slightly. "Madeline Cannon committed suicide just two days after she came home from her blood service. Slit her own throat with an antique scalpel from her father’s office. That was after she....she...mutilated her face. So when I tell you that Lex can be trusted, I speak the truth. There isn't a soul in lake city who hates those blood suckers more than Alexis Cannon.”
“So we get inside, get this Lex. Then what?” Rylie's tone had softened as he spoke.
“With her keycard we can get into the vamp tower. I’ve heard Zhang turned the whole top floor into some sort of throne room. His food and playthings are usually kept in rooms on the floor below.”
“And prisoners?”
“No clue. We’ll find out I suppose.”
“Look the hard part is going to be getting inside. There’s a loading dock on the first floor that should be loosely watching during the day time. Most folks avoid the first floor like the plague due to the carpet.”
“Carpet?”
“Term some jackass thought was funny for the dead round the hospital complex. Most caravan trades are done here.” She pointed at a spot on the map passed the river. Ethan nodded, confirming the old rendezvous point. “While we live here.” Her fingertip circled the hospital. “Everything in between? Shoulder to shoulder dead and moaning.”
“Like a living carpet.” Ben snorted. "That’s good."
“Yeah. Rich.” The scav rolled her eyes.
“Why no clean out?” Candice chimed in, looking confused, hands on her hips. Perfectly polished nails tapped at the metal rivets of her tight jeans as she spoke. “Isn’t that the deal?”
“Deal was to keep us alive. Inside we are alive. Outside, we get eaten. Keeps order.” China sighed. “Wasn’t that bad in the beginning, was actually pleasant to be able to sleep a whole night without fear of someone ripping up your legs after you got caught off guard. We had food, we had docs, we had this new state of the art go green bullshit. It wasn’t until the second year in that Zhang started treating us like cattle, openly I should say. They stopped thinning the undead horde that crept outside, oh sure they’d place a vamp on ground level so if anything ever managed to get in it would be handled, but essentially reiterated it was a prison. Then the abductions started. Those that were taken for feeding...when they came back they were dead but breathing...husks of their former selves.”
“Taken?” Candice raised an eyebrow.
China sneered at her. “You know how your kind is. We’re nothing but meat sacks to you. To be used however your little immortal brains desire until you’re bored then we’re out in the trash.”
“Just because he thinks that doesn’t mean I do. These people are my friends-”
“-and food.” China spat.
“It doesn’t mean I have to kill them for it.”
“Whatever.”
“So how do we get through the carpet?” Rylie mused, pacing back and forth on the cheap tile. Candice wrinkled her nose, I played with the chain of my angel pendant. How indeed.
A dull scraping sound cut through our quiet think tank. Standing in the doorway to the sales floor was a very deceased employee. Still in his blue work polo, a brightly colored badge on his shirt reading 'Hi! My name is Carl'. Mostly intact, the deadhead reached out with both arms for the closest person in the room. Milky white eyes focusing on Ben, jaw dropping in a barely audible moan.
"Hey Ethan you missed one." Ben looked over at the shuffling Carl with disdain. I was impressed how much the big guy had changed in just a year. When we'd been in downtown Des Moines such a thing would have had him leaping into the air, axes flying.
"Crap I guess I did." Pulling an icepick of his belt Ethan stood, moving to intercept our uninvited guest. "Sorry Carl," He drove the sharp end through the right
eye socket, "you're fired."
Ben swung his feet down off the table, raising his hands in the air. "Fired? Hey now, looks like Carl put in eleven solid years of overtime. He should be employee of the month if you ask me." Walking over to the HR posted notices board Ben pulled down a picture of a smiling Latina named Rosa that hung on a large silver star matte. In its place he wrote Carl with a black pen. Barely legible, his penmanship rivaled that of a small child. I didn't have the heart to tell him the r was backwards.
"There." Turning around he smiled at all of us triumphantly.
Candice laughed first, a soft but contagious giggle that spread across the room until everyone momentarily forgot our predicament. Even Rylie.
As the laughter died down, Ethan dragged the body into the hallway, then closed the door to the break room.
"Maybe we should just borrow some uniforms and tell them we have a TV delivery."
I ripped a sheet from the weekly mailer someone left on the table. "Yeah right." I quipped, throwing the wadded up shampoo advertisement at him.
"So you have a better idea Liv?"
I didn't. Ethan threw the paper back at me, the corner smeared with blood from his recent kill. Not wanting to touch that, I batted it down onto the table. Gross.
“If we clear a path in they’ll know we are there faster than you can say oh shit.” Ben frowned, collapsing back into the uncomfortable blue plastic chair. Slowly he started flipping through the various paper clippings.
"Stop." Rylie's eyes were locked on the page in front of Ben. "That is it."
"What is what?"
"Up and over.” Rylie smiled wide, tapping at a picture of the mountain on a coffee ad with his left hand.
“Beg pardon?” I wasn't sure how his gym teacher command aided our situation.
“Ever hear of a little thing called a zip line Liv? We’ll lodge one end above the front awning of the hospital, other from the office complex across the street, zip over the dead and onto the second floor.”
“We will have to be on guard for vamps in the main lobby.”
“I’ll go first then.” Offered Candice.
“Wait wait...you want us to slide across a thin cable above thousands of hungry dead into a hospital building full of vampires and humans who will probably try to kill us on sight?” Ethan was turning whiter by the second.
“In a nut shell.” Rylie replied. “Once we’re inside, you positive you can find this Lex?”
“Provided she's still alive. Positive.”
“Well then. Rest up kiddos, for tomorrow we do something batshit crazy.”
I nodded, a strange lick of anticipation fluttered in my heart. D was in there somewhere, and I sure as hell was bringing him home.
Getting from the shopping center to the high rise had taken most of the night, through alleyways mostly. Candice had done the majority of the clearing for us, a blonde blur head of the group leaving a trail of ripped limbs and putrid puddles in her wake. Even with her efforts I had to put my short blade to skull three times thus far due to the sheer volume of the dead in the area. Twice in the stairwell of this building and once by the trash bins in the alley outback. The dull concurrent moans amplified the closer we got to our target. A perpetual sound that even the most complacent survivor could not dismiss as white noise. There was something about it that no matter how many times you heard that wail, it still grazed your spine. Once we were inside the concrete walls of our launch point it dissipated with each flight of stairs, the sound replaced with distant memories of the last flashlight guided stairwell endeavor and the death that followed. I saw it in Ben's eyes as well every time I looked behind me; his lips pursed, brow furrowed, knuckles white around his axe hold. Fortunately for us, this up bound trek yielded no casualties, just a quiet hallway and empty offices high above the ground. Made sense to me, who wanted to report to work while the world burned?
We took position on the fifth floor of the building across from the hospital. Directly across from us the lights were on in the building, shadows of the living moved about behind drawn curtains. Not many, but just enough to validate some of China's direction thus far. Good thing, Rylie was almost overly eager to cut her loose in the harshest interpretation imaginable. When we first opened the door to this office I had been mesmerized by it. A building illuminated in the black void, a beacon of what we had once been. Such a simple thing to marvel upon really, yet...I had dropped my bow and stood there, eyes wide before the monolith. I would have been embarrassed had my other companions not been equally enthralled.
"Will you look at that." Rylie had whispered.
"No wonder there are so many dead beneath, damn building is a giant bug zapper without the kill effect." Ethan had muttered.
And that was that, all of us left to our own internal brooding while work began on executing our intricate entrance strategy. Laid out on top of the receptionist's high counter, I took some downtime while Rylie worked, the chill of the hard marble feeling wonderful on my back. Honestly, as much as I hated to admit it, those five flights of stairs had been rough on my thighs. I didn't want a break, I needed it.
By now it was maybe four o'clock in the morning, Candice was getting ancy. Pacing back and forth while Rylie meticulously cut out a pane of glass from the floor to ceiling windows. The glass cutter he used had a bent handle and rust on the blade. Ten years of light water damage from the seasons taking its toll on its usefulness. The shopping center like many other buildings had a roof cave in and severe internal leaking from lack of maintenance. Puddles and soft spots riddled the floors, a sore symptom of the building we were currently in as well. The blue-gray carpeting reeked of mold, the essence of mildew permeated the very air in an invisible fog that assaulted our senses. This suite had previously been some sort of financial advisory office. Wall graphics challenged us to prepare for retirement, smiling couples waved in front of boats, others gave thumbs up in front of vineyards.
"Hey scav...can I ask you a question?" Ben was talking through a mouth full of jerky.
"No." Her dirty blonde hair fell in her face as she turned her head to the side, not that she could do anything about it with her hands bound.
"Its about the heads."
"I said no."
"What's with them heads?" Gnashing her teeth, China tried to turn further from him but there was no where to go. Ben leaned in, pushing her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. Inches from her face he spoke softly, but even at a low decibel I could hear every word. "Your little freaky Christmas tree back in whatever you called it falls."
"...just a deterrent."
"From?" He tore another bite off of his ration.
She gave him a wide flirty smile, leaning forward. For a split second I saw Ben's eyes light up, undoubtedly he had started playing out some scene in his head of sneaking off with the wild girl while Rylie worked on mission objectives. "Being capable of freaky shit like that," she purred at him, "keeps guys like you off of girls like me." China spit right in his face. "Pig."
With a laugh he wiped off his cheek with the back of his palm, then leaned down smearing her saliva across the front of her shirt. Muttering something about triple S under his breath as he walked over to Ethan. Who quickly nodded in agreement.
I caught her eye for a second, long enough to send her an obvious look of disapproval.
Ben swaggered over to me, flipping through dusty brochures that had been meticulously arranged in a plastic display.
"Taking the time to consider your 401 selections Ben?" I asked, stretching my left leg out, rolling my ankle around in tiny circles. The tight fit of my boot limited the range but a stretch was still a stretch that brought relief to my tendons.
"Yeah I figured I'd up my contributions by two percent, check out by the time I'm thirty five and get a nice piece of beachfront property." The grin was a deception born out of routine, his lackluster gaze and flat tone conveyed no real merriment. Still I played on, with little else to kill the time it seemed the only
proper option.
"Not me." I declared, raising my other leg for the same routine. "I'm going to pull out all my investments and go double or nothing at roulette."
He whistled high tone to low. "Oooo...high roller."
"You know it."
"I don't see how you two can joke around at a time like this." Ethan hissed, unfolding his arms long enough to re-tuck his already tucked hair behind his ears. Since we got in position he had been broodingly statuesque; his feet planted just on the edge of the flashlights beam, gaze focused solely on the thick mob in the street far below. In the thin moonlight the threat was virtually impossible to discern. Outlines of the dead lost in the darkness that enveloped everything except the hospital complex.
Ben shrugged."Have to keep light and loose dude, eat drink and be merry-"
"-for tomorrow we die." China muttered. We had found some zip cuffs in the security office of the department store. Rylie insisted on binding her, had even threatened a gag twice that I overheard.
"Just as long as its not today." Ethan huffed, shifting his weight from his left leg to his right. I closed my eyes, focusing on taking deep even breaths. My ears picked up Ethan quietly asking Rylie if he needed any help for the fifth time.
Unlike the others I was not dreading what lay before us, rather I met it with anticipation boring on excitement. A madness in itself, but I could not shake the steady hum that resonated under my skin. It was a homecoming, a feeling of pending completion that defied logical explanation. Feeling light headed I focused on the buzz, laying my head back on the cold marble countertop someone had probably paid a small fortune for. With my eyes closed my mind painted a picture of a familiar face upon the endless black abyss; high cheekbones set under ice blue eyes, soft full lips that masked brilliant white teeth, thick black hair cut to accentuate a strong jawline. His smile lazy and relaxed. Not the deadly creature I had seen in darkened streets, but the one who laughed with me. Cared for me.
Breach (The Blood Bargain) Page 22