She turned in panic to see Moses step away from the metal door and jump behind the metal frame of the bed. Without his support, the door quickly came crashing in. Turning the frame vertically, Moses leapt into the doorway halting their assault. In a glorious display of strength, Moses pressed them back out the doorway.
Once Moses moved into the hallway, he switched the frame to a horizontal position that spanned the width of the hallway. Val moved to protect his backside down the left end of the hallway. Luckily most of the zombies continued to pour in on Moses’ side of the hallway and she had an easy time defending his flank. Moses kept the entire other half of the hallway at bay by smashing them up against the metal frame. Try as they might, most couldn’t fit their arms through the wire mesh. With Moses continuing to force the zombies into retreat, they were pressed up against each other and unable to crawl underneath. With great effort, Moses took one step after another driving them back. Val made short work of any easy targets or those few able to get through the wire mesh. Finally, some were able to ride the top of the crowd reaching Moses. Before Val could kill them, they latched onto his head biting into his face with their mouths and scraping at him with their fingernails. He lowered his head trying to guard his face, but their strength overtook him mutilating his eyes and the entire front of his face. Without a single break in his determination, he marched them backwards down the hall cramming them back into the stairwell.
By the time Moses reached the hallway door, the soldiers from the first floor had moved into the stairwell and were now setup into a position to kill the zombies on the second floor stairway. When they could, the gunners moved up just in time to find a collapsed Moses worn out from his heroics. They barely recognized him from his appearance. Alongside him they found a shaking Val firing off the last of her rounds.
∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙ ∙
Meanwhile in the lobby, Sara became furious screaming at the hosts as she battled those unlucky enough to combat her. Connor stood barricaded in one corner with his pistol.
“I know what you would do, Reginald,” she screamed, “how you would keep me from true knowledge and will teach me only about the past! But I am a faster learner than you predicted. Do you see how I foreknow the movements of my enemies? You cannot keep me from the future! I know you’re not limited only to the past. Allow Corpus to teach me!”
Reginald obviously displeased by her actions turned to look at her full-faced. Like a spider in a nightmare he lunged from his perch, sailed through the air, and landed on her. Seizing her face, he shoved it through the floor as easily as if it were water.
“Would you know the future?” Reginald screamed. “Then gaze on it until your eyes burst!”
Sara immediately felt her body thrown into a place of torment. Everything in sight burned with a stinging intensity as if every object were the sun. She heard a terrifying bellow and only later realized it came from her own mouth. Her body told her to weep and curl into a ball against the burning sensation but one thing stopped her. She saw, when she forced her eyes open, a man. Through the flames he came to her. Leaping inside of her, her heart knew it to be her husband coming finally to rescue her. But he passed through her unaware and paid no attention to her outstretched hand. She followed him and found him seated at a table with many others.
At first, she could not understand his words for they came to her ears like the breaking of boulders. But eventually her mind cleared and she perceived his horrible meaning. By the people in attendance and the surroundings she knew it to be somewhere under Zalac’s control.
Brady addressed the man across the table from him. “By my actions of the last several weeks, surely you know my allegiances are indeed to Zalac. There isn’t a king within hundreds of miles of this place and yet I serve you freely unhindered by their influence. All my actions over the last several years have pointed, like an arrow, to this audience. Even the killing of your king was to make you notice me. Long have I wanted to serve Zalac.
“But should you still have any doubt, I freely offer to you my crowning achievement. As you know, the company that escaped Colorado Springs is wandering helplessly lost somewhere in Texas. But what you do not know-” he paused giving a smirk, “is that Sara, my wife, is pregnant with a child bursting with potential to us.” At this Sara’s fears came pouring down upon her head. She grabbed her stomach in anguish and screamed against his words. “She grows inside of her one even more powerful than myself. My heir. If Zalac has interest in me, it has a greater interest in my offspring. For I am old and set in my ways. Protocuss did not free my mind until much later in life. Decades of living with a corrupted mind has limited me. But this child has been born in Protocuss's limitless potential. He knows no bounds.
“Send the hound and all the forces of Zalac. Murder her friends before her and drag the bitch here. Strap her to the operating table and cut the child out of her. Then I will eat her. A poetic end to the agony I subjected her to when I first chose to save her from her madness. Then my offspring will be my own.”
Sara came up from the halls of time like a drowning woman bursting from the waters. Reginald loosed his grip on her and she kicked herself away from him. Connor came from his barricade to her assistance against Reginald.
“You lie!” she screamed in horror.
“Never,” Reginald replied with his nose turned upwards in lofty dignity.
Val entered the room just in time to see Reginald releasing Sara and her kicking away from him. Connor reached her first standing between Sara and Reginald. A furious Val pulled out her side arm pointing it at the host.
“What did you do to her?” Val screamed. Reginald only grunted and turned his back to her as he moved towards the ladder to his loft.
“Sara, are you alright?” Connor asked. Sara made no reply.
Val ran up to Connor and Sara. “You’re shaking,” Val said. “And you have goose bumps all over. You’re freezing!”
Val threw a nearby blanket around Sara and turned to the hosts. “I’ve had enough of this freak show. Sara, we’re getting out of here now.” Val pointed her gun at Reginald and would have pulled the trigger if Sara hadn’t spoken.
“Val, wait,” Sara moaned. She turned to the hosts and asked, “Tell me if you know. Brady will return to us, yes? This poison that corrupts his mind will finally dissolve and he’ll remember us?”
Constantino answered. “Brady is now the dragonhead of the force against you.” Constantino closed his eyes. “I can see his actions since a boy. His intentions have brought him like an unbroken arrow to this goal. And I see no shifting in him now.”
“Sara,” Val broke in, “let’s go before the zombies come again.”
“You must turn, Sara,” Reginald said. “No longer can you believe Brady is being corrupted. He is of his own free will your arch-attacker.”
“He saved me. Why would he do that just for grief? It doesn’t make sense!”
“Why do you expect it to?” Reginald screamed. “This man has only been lunatical to you! Why are there wrinkles on your head? How can your faith in him not be dead? You’ve seen his bloody betrayal with your own bleeding eyes. He will not relent until all around you dies. And he yanks your child out of your very womb and makes his mouth your tomb!” At this Val shot a stunned look to her companion. “He rescued you but he does not care for you.”
At this point Constantino chimed in, “You are not his lover. How can you trust such a double-sided man?”
“You hate him, don’t you?” Sara screamed to the both of them. “Reginald, I’ve seen how intrigued you are by his mystery. He eludes you and that stings you to the core, doesn’t it? He’s a riddle you can’t solve and it’s driving you insane. I should have known I wouldn’t get the truth with your poison around here, Reginald. You’re hindering me just like you cripple Corpus.”
Reginald looked down from his lofty perch at her like an angry bird. He spoke now in a slow meticulous voice. “Brady, my dear, is anchored to this dying earth. Despite
all his scheming, he’ll come smashing against one unavoidable wall of truth: he, like the world, is passing away. Though he burned brightly, his time, like a star, is ending. Already I see the sickly yellow hue about him as we see all those about to die in the halls of time!
“I see you tottering on the fence about him. He is your love but he is an abandoner, murderer, and villain. You’ve heard him say he acts out of his own free will. How can you possibly rectify this when you think on how he shot someone through the head and then ate their brains? Think of the horrible words he’s laid on you! If that was not madness, he is an awful sadistic person!
“Why, you ask, has he saved you? I do not have an answer unless it is for his own sick pleasure of watching you suffer. He has used you like an animal might to breed offspring. And when your baby’s time comes, he’ll cast you aside. His promises to you lie broken at your feet. He stands bathed in the blood of the innocent. And now he sends the very hound against you. You’re a fool for not seeing this earlier.
“You have a great opportunity before you. Stalk the halls of time and see if I am lying. Think of those around you. At least do not drown them with your ignorant beliefs. Whether you would accept it or not, you are a leader among them now. Your abilities have thrust you into that position. Do not continue in your foolishness!
“Take your ignorance elsewhere, fool, before I make you a film critic too! Go flying off to your door in the sky!”
She stood for a moment reeling in the gravity of his words. A part of her wanted to invite Corpus to come along with them, but she knew he would decline and Reginald might attack them if she asked.
Val, now horribly impatient, took a hold of Sara. “There is nothing else for you here. We have to go before something even more terrible happens.”
Just then a soldier ran into the room. “They’ve disabled the vehicles!” he blurted out. “None of them will start!”
“What have you done?” Connor screamed at the three.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Val yelled. “You’re products of Zalac and you’re still working for them aren’t you? That’s why you didn’t warn us about the impending attack!”
“Oh, the fish wants to know why the water is wet. You’re in a war now, dearie, you’d best be on your guard for that sort of thing,” Constantino replied snidely.
Val fought her better inclinations to kill at least the two of them. Something told her it would do not good anyway. Instead she dragged a dazed Sara to the outside. All three hosts watched as they exited.
Outside Val and the others found the entire team had gathered. As they examined the vehicles they found nothing mechanically wrong with them. No parts were missing. But when they turned the keys nothing happened. Several of the soldiers who were more mechanically minded began trying to find the problem.
“Now we’re stuck here in the middle of nowhere,” one of the soldiers panicked.
“I told you we should have left,” Val replied.
Sara made no reply but took Val’s words into her heart. After some time, the soldiers working on the vehicles still had no idea what was wrong. All their Humvees suffered the same untraceable fate.
“We’ll need to find other vehicles,” one of them finally announced. “Are we still going to head east?”
“Yes,” Sara announced realizing Reginald’s words rang true about her being a natural leader.
“Yes,” Val replied a little frustrated that Sara had replied first. “We’ll move by foot east until we can find another vehicle.”
“How are we on supplies?” Connor asked.
“We’ve been conserving what we had because there was so much food here,” replied one of the soldiers. “We have several days’ worth but should resupply soon.”
Sara found a shell of Moses hunched over beside the door. Barely examining him, she could tell his wounds were grave.
Feeling someone’s presence near, Moses called out weakly, “Who’s there?”
She knelt before him seeing his face terribly mangled and his vision obviously destroyed. “Oh, Moses,” she said placing her hand gently on his shoulder.
“Sara,” he replied softly.
“Will you lead me out?” he said extending his hand in her direction. She took it helping the large man to his feet.
“I believe the zombies had some type of chemicals on their hands. My skin burns with a pain not only of severed flesh.”
Despite his calm composure, Sara’s heart ached for him. She marveled at his sheer strength. She knew he must be in excruciating pain.
∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙ ∙
Under the fear of a second attack, the company finally was underway. Val would have liked to see Moses stay put, but she also didn’t want to see the company put in danger again for a single person.
Once they stored all the supplies they could carry, the company finally vacated the hotel. Sara turned to take in one last glance of the hotel before she stepped out with the rest back into the wasteland.
As she did, she remembered Reginald’s stinging words. But they paled in comparison to the horrible words of Brady at the prison. Her heart was crushed under the realization that he said them out of his own mind and not his madness. Her heart now seemed a pitiful thing only ever expanding in its emptiness. Almost physically she felt her soul falling through chasms of nothing. Desperate for any anchor, it grasped out but found no hope.
Sara turned her head from the wasteland winds. There turned away from the others, she wept greatly.
Part 5
Wandering
The tempest had lessened some, but the travelers still had to cover their faces from the intensity. They moved huddled together for fear of getting lost and dread of nearby enemies. With the storm came blindness and they feared an attack they couldn’t anticipate. They moved in what they believed to be east but without a compass and in the confusing sand it was impossible to tell.
It seemed silly to them now that they never took a compass from one of the many stores they passed. But there had always been ample road signs and maps to guide them. Val announced it should be a top priority now.
The sand forced its way into Moses’ wound stinging all the more. He groaned often turning his cuts from the wind. Val came over to help Sara aid him. One under each arm, the two women propped him up allowing him to place one feeble foot before another.
Several hours later, they came wandering into another small town. Connor ransacked a local store looking for a compass and anything else that might prove useful. Val inspected the troops and found that Moses’ suspicions were correct. The soldiers unlucky enough to suffer lacerations bore a strange stinging sensation and obvious infection. Several of the soldiers went looking for transportation but found every vehicle had been disabled and not a single engine would turn over.
“What?” Val complained, “is Zalac going to destroy every car in the United States?”
Moses did his best to reply but spoke each word slowly and bathed in pain. “They seem adamant about keeping us on our feet.” Val was still getting used to him not speaking directly to her. “Surely they’re becoming more cunning. They’re stripping us of our advantages. They’ve robbed us of sight and ability to move quickly.”
“It’s only a matter of time until they find us,” Val replied. “Are there any repair shops here where we could find parts and fix a vehicle?”
At Val’s suggestion some of the soldiers found an auto shop. The best mechanics in the group began working on several of the vehicles. After two hours passed, they narrowed the issue down to the electrical system, but replacing parts wouldn’t fix it. The group finally decided to abandon the project when they were no closer after several hours.
Val, frustrated with their run of bad luck, whined, “Once again, I’ve underestimated Zalac’s ambition and hatred of us. Are we the only ones on their hit list? Isn’t there anyone else they can pick on? What did I ever do to them?”
“They hate us because we’re human,” Sara told her.
“They’re systematically eradicating all life from this planet not under their control. And Brady leads them.”
Val looked at Sara somber at the sound of these words. “Yes, what was Reginald talking about?”
Sara took a moment to answer. “Brady has abandoned us on a whole new level. I think he was always using us to accomplish his goals. He used us to get himself into Zalac.” Val put her arm around Sara. “There is no one to rescue us.”
“Are you sure,” Val asked. “Isn’t he just being corrupted? It’s all just bad thinking left over from when he was infected. It’s the kings!”
“No, Reginald spoke the truth. I know it clearly now. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. Brady used us all along. And now I’m his breeding whore.”
“Sara,” Val tried to comfort her friend, “I know Brady and I don’t think he would have done this. It’s just not who he is!”
“I agree,” Moses’ deep voice said. “I don’t know why this is happening or why he was taken or why he murdered or why he’s told Zalac what he did, but he cares, Sara. He has not abandoned us.”
“Then how do you explain all this?” Sara yelled. “I’m pregnant, hunted by zombies, alone in my thoughts, wandering in the wilderness and now Brady is after us and has said himself he wants to kill you all and eat me! If that’s not abandonment, I don’t know what is!”
“Let me carry you for a while. You’ll feel better,” Moses said in kind words. “Once we find a vehicle you won’t have to be on your feet as much.”
“No, Moses,” Sara screamed at him. “I’m not about to have a blind man carry me out of pity. I don’t want a vehicle! I don’t even want sunshine. I want Brady! The old Brady. Back when things made sense. I want him here! He promised me! The bastard!” Sara broke down into tears. “He promised me he’d never leave me.” She managed to say between sobs, “But I’m alone. So alone! Even in my mind, I’m different. I know too much. I’m not like you guys anymore. I’m all strange and distant like he was. My head's all full of-" she stopped short as if there were no word for the idea she tried to convey. "I can’t just look at you guys and see friends. I see… too much now. I just want to go back to the way things were.” She wrapped the blanket she draped around herself even tighter and went off a ways by herself.
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