Ok by me, now that things aren’t trying to kill me and people aren’t pointing guns at me, the adrenaline rush has subsided enough for me to stop and smell the roses, except the roses are zombie blood and guts and the smell is pretty damn rank. I shrug out of the jacket, pull off the gloves and hat and step out of the boots and leave the whole mess in a pile outside of his door. Someone will come and take it to be sanitized and returned to my quarters. Everybody here has a job.
I come in and don’t need to be told to close the door behind me.
Coming in I expect to be chewed out for turning the world upside down and springing the word of a human child survivor on the group, for risking lives by breaking protocol and asking for help coming in, and for any number of damn transgressions I can think of that he would want to bust me for.
Or even the deeply buried optimist in me might have even on some level hoped or longed for maybe a ‘hey, you found a miracle, way to fucking go,’ sort of deal.
Didn’t get either one of those.
What I got?
“So, how did my daughter do on her first run?”
Never, ever believe anyone who tells you, hey, it can’t get weirder. Because trust me, it always can.
“Shut the fuck up.” Yeah I am one witty verbally quick on my feet son of a bitch.
He gives me a tired smile and leans back in his chair a little, the springs in it groaning a little under his shifting weight. I swear his battered face is even more lined than it was when I left this morning. The guy carries a lot of weight for us Narwhals and that load never gets any damn lighter.
“Yeah, she’s my daughter. She don’t like me much but she is my daughter, she’s been here with us since the beginning but didn’t want to be treated any different. She has worked every damn dirty job we have here from kitchen to laundry and when she came to me about joining runs I had to admit she has earned it.”
“She did great, got a lot of heart. With a little seasoning she will make a good scavenger.”
He nods at me and closes his eyes for a long moment without speaking so I take a clue for a change and don’t speak either.
“Jesus, Jake. You brought back a live child, can’t begin to say what a mind fuck that is. Word is likely all over the building by now and half will want to hold her in their loving arms and half will want to kill her in case she turns.”
“And what half do you fall in boss?” I ask and even as I say it, I know that I might have pushed my luck a little.
The glare he gives me should cause me to burst into spontaneous combustion or dissolve into a greasy puddle on the floor. His hands clench into huge fists and a vein in his forehead starts to pulse.
“Can we just pretend I wasn’t stupid enough to ask that?” I say in my best, I was just an asshole and let’s move on voice. I end up using that one a lot.
After a moment he unclenches his fists and gives me a combination grunt and nod that I am happy to take as a yes.
“We will give the doc a chance to look her over and then you and I will debrief her as best we can. Has she said much?”
“Just ‘please don’t hurt me’ she might have said more to your daughter sir but that is all I have heard her say.” I tell him with a shrug.
He stands up signaling that the meeting is over and waves me out the door with his meaty hand.
“Clean up, get it together and meet me in the infirmary in one hour. Don’t speak of this to anyone in the building until I tell you different, clear?” He barks at me.
“Like fine crystal sir.” I tell him as I stand up and toss him a sloppy half assed salute that I know he knows there is genuine respect in.
“One more thing Jake…” He says as I open the door and get ready to head on out.
“Yes sir?”
“Thanks for bringing my girl back alive.” He says in an uncharacteristically soft and subdued voice.
“She brought me back alive just as much as the other way around sir, see you in the infirmary in one hour.”
My stuff is already gone from the hallway outside of the door, like I said everyone has a job here and we all do them to the best of our ability for one simple reason.
Everyone’s survival depends upon us all doing so.
I make my way to my quarters passing people who stare at me but don’t quite have the nerve to approach me with whatever the hell they want to say to me or ask me. I don’t look at them as I go, I am an insubordinate jerk most of the time but when Big Al says don’t speak my mouth stays shut. I follow his orders for a lot of reasons but the biggest one is that he has earned the right to give me orders.
He has earned the right to do so a thousand times over. Starting with the day that he and his crew found me, took me in and made me an important part of the Narwhal team.
An hour gives me time to splash the worst of the mess off of myself in the sink in my room and change into clothing not covered in zombie splatter and that is about it. I treat myself to half a cigarette from my dwindling supply and the last shot or two of bourbon in the bottle I scored a few runs ago.
It has been one hell of a day and it ain’t over yet sports fans.
I head out the door and start making my way to the buildings infirmary up three floors and no damn escalator or elevator.
One of the many inconveniences of the zombie apocalypse.
CHAPTER SIX
I now have no problem believing that Joyce is Big Al’s daughter, no problem at all.
As I walk up to the infirmary she has one of the guards against the wall with the bone handled bowie knife I gave her shoved under his chin. He is standing on his tippy toes so that it doesn’t actually cut him and she looks gloriously pissed off. Her whole body is quivering and her cheeks are flushed.
She is beautiful when she is angry.
“What were your orders?” She demands as she stands there looking like the poster child for I will fucking end you.
“To not let anyone in without orders from Big Al.” The guard says quietly, to his credit he knows he fucked up, it is written all over his face.
“Stand down newbie and tell me what the hell is going on.” I tell her as I come walking up. The other two guards have a sobbing man pinned to the floor and I can pretty much guess what happened.
She shoots me a wild glance but doesn’t let the guard come down off of the wall. He is getting tired of standing on his tippy toes so I give it another try with the voice of reason.
“You didn’t hear me say stand down?’ I ask mildly as I walk up and touch her gently on the shoulder.
Taking a deep breath she lowers the knife and takes a big step backwards. The guard slumps to the floor holding his more or less intact neck. A tiny thin trickle of blood is running down it.
“Report.” I say to the room at large.
“She is one of the fucking demons from hell!” The man pinned on the floor screams.
“I actually meant a report from one of the people in the room not being pinned down because they are bat shit crazy.” I decided to clarify.
I recognize the guy being held down now, we know him as Father Mike. He joined us a few months back and he holds services every Sunday in one of the common rooms. He has always been wound a little tight, he lost a lot of people on the days following the fall of the dust including his wife Kali and a teenage daughter who were slaughtered by his nine year old son. We don’t let him go on runs because all he wants to do is kill zombies and he doesn’t care if he dies trying.
For obvious reasons nobody wants to partner with him on runs, most of us still have at least a passing interest in coming back alive.
“You let him in?” I ask the guard holding his neck on the floor, I already know the answer.
“Sorry Jake, he didn’t have any weapons and he said he wanted to bless the child.” He manages to gasp out.
Joyce moves to kick him but I get in the way and give her a slow shake of my head and she backs off.
“He tried to strangle her.” She spits out.
“Is she ok?’ I ask her calmly.
“No thanks to these idiots, yes she is. The doctor is examining her now, she cleans up… nice.” There are wistful almost painful tones in her voice that speak of losses that are none of my damn business so I don’t ask more questions.
I turn my attention instead to the guards.
“Two of you escort Father Mike to his quarters and confine him there until further notice. Big Al will decide what to do about this later. I trust everyone understands that they don’t let anyone in without express orders from the big man means, don’t fucking let anyone in right?” I make my tone as scathing as I think it needs to be to make the point.
They all nod shamefacedly and go about the business of hauling the screeching nut job away. The other guards take up position outside of the door and I have faith now that nobody who isn’t supposed to will be coming through the doorway.
“Big Al is meeting us here in a few minutes for a debriefing. Has the girl said anything to you since we have come in?” I ask her crisply, all business.
She gives me a searching look and I know that she is wondering if I know that the big man is her father. I keep my face neutral, his secrets aren’t mine to spill. If there is something that she wants me to know she can tell me easily enough. Until the big guy says different my mouth is shut about it.
The doctor comes out, I have always liked the guy. He is a sawed off little runt, half Irish half Hispanic and tough as freaking nails. Before all this happened he was doing his residency and thinking about becoming a trauma surgeon, now he patches up us Narwhals from our various misadventures. He gives me a tired smile.
“How is she?” I ask.
“She is sleeping now, I gave her a light sedative. Aside from being dehydrated and malnourished she is in surprisingly good shape. I would guess that she is eight or nine years old.” He rubs the top of his bald head wearily as he speaks. He is our only doctor, so under the best of circumstances he doesn’t get a whole lot of rest.
“So tell me Doc, how the hell does a nine year old little girl survive out there without being zombie chow?” Big Al asks in his booming voice as he comes into the room. He gives me and Joyce a brief nod but then his attention is totally fixed on the doctor.
“She says that the baddies, that is what she calls them, completely ignore her. Apparently they don’t see children as prey. Come back and have a look, there are a couple things you should see.” He leads us back into the large storeroom that has become our infirmary.
The child is on a medical cot that we scavenged from the hospital a few runs ago. Joyce is right, the child cleans up good. They have stripped her of the rags we found her in and given her at least a sponge bath, her eyes are closed but moving restless beneath the lids.
Don’t want to even guess at what kind of dreams she might be having.
She is pale with strawberry blonde hair and painfully thin and small for her age if the doctor is right about it. An IV drip is going into one of her frail arms and she is dressed in an old Motley Crew t-shirt, far too large for her.
We all just stand there for a few minutes looking down on her.
“Father Mike won’t be the last of us to lose it over this, I am tripling her guard.” The boss man says quietly.
“She calls herself Tina. She also says that she lived for a while in the hospital with a tall doctor and other children like her. You need to see this.” Doc tells us as he reaches down and gently pulls one of her feet out from underneath the light blanket she is under.
Tattooed on the bottom of her foot is the number seventeen.
“What the fuck!!??” Big Al whispers.
Pretty much the question in all of our minds I suppose.
“Couldn’t get much more out of her, she seems a little confused about how she ended up where you found her. She kept talking about the hospital and the others like her there.” The doctor places her foot back just as gently as he took it out. It must be strange for him, he likely never thought that he would have a child as a patient again.
All children under the age of puberty died the day the dust fell. Most of the children over that age died in the blood bath that followed, here in this building we don’t have a soul under nineteen. Every woman who was pregnant the day the dust fell either miscarried or were torn apart by their unborn zombie child ripping its way out into the world.
The first thing that every Narwhal man gets when he joins up is a vasectomy, not that the idea of a undead blood thirsty fiend chewing his or her way out of the womb isn’t effective birth control all by itself.
Me, I have always been able to rely on my charming personality as an effective form of birth control.
“Hard to believe she means the hospital near here, we have been raiding it for months but have never seen any sign of anyone alive there, let alone at least one tall doctor and seventeen children.” I tell Big Al.
He snorts derisively and waves a meaty paw at me.
“Hell boy, that place is huge and all we do is dart in and out of it trying to grab supplies and not get eaten. We haven’t scratched the surface of searching the damn place. No, pretty sure that’s where she came from. Look at her, don’t think she marched miles to be found by you two.”
“I agree, a few years back during the big Ebola scare the hospital put in a CDC level isolation lab deep in the lower levels of the building. If anyone managed to hide healthy living children that would be my guess as a place to start looking.” The doctor says motioning us to step back out of the room and let his little patient rest.
“We will let her get some sleep, I am giving her fluids and soon we will try her on some food. Maybe that will ease her confusion and we will be able to get some straight answers out of her.” He tells us softly.
“All right doc, Jake, I want you to hand pick a rotation of guards and get them into place ASAP. These are closed door session’s people, when we have some real info we will share it out, but for now it stays with us. I am going to put together a squad to check out the hospital, floor by damn floor if need be.” Big Al tells us as he gets ready to leave.
“I volunteer.” Joyce and I say at the exact same instant.
“Yeah, pretty much figured that.” The boss man says as he walks away shaking his craggy head.
“Jinx.” We both say at once again, at exactly the same time.
That is worth a smile from both of us.
Around here we take those where we can find them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The mood in the building is tense, Big Al’s word is law but while that might stop anyone from overtly trying anything it doesn’t stop the low rumble of grumbling and muttering flowing around. The guards I have hand-picked will make sure that all it amounts to is grumbling but we are operating on borrowed time here. We need answers and the most direct route to those answers is to go to the damn hospital and shake them out of somebody.
It is killing Big Al to know that he can’t be on the team that goes looking for those answers, his bum leg makes him a liability and he is too good of leader to inflict that burden on a team. Instead he will select the best people that he can and give them the best supplies that we have to give them the very best chances of survival and success.
In the end the team is whittled down to nine people.
Joyce is going, which in and of itself raised quite a few eyebrows because nobody knows about her connection to the boss man. If any explanation is being offered it is that she has a connection to the girl and we need somebody along who has actually talked to a child lately in case we find more.
I am going, but I am known for doing dumb shit like this, so nobody is too surprised by the information that I am doing yet another risky ass thing.
The rest of the team is a mixed bag, the doc wanted to go but there is no way that we can risk losing our only doctor, so that got vetoed pretty damn fast. Instead we are taking his assistant, a tall black older guy named Jamal. Bonus there, he used to be an orderly at the hospital an
d has at least a vague notion of the layout of the place.
The other six are straight up soldiers, hard core veterans of multiple runs, it is nobody first day at the rodeo. Four men and two women. I have personally been out on runs with all of them and no matter how messy the missions got we all got home alive.
I once had the pleasure of having a drink with an eighty five year old retired Air Force Major named Willard Borland, in an airport bar on lay over between one place I didn’t really want to be and the next and after a few stiff gins he delivered this piece of wisdom on me.
Any landing you walk away from is a good one.
If there were still tattoo parlors, I might just have that tattooed somewhere on my skinny ass.
Only one choice concerns me, a tall rangy southern boy named Willis. He is a quiet one and I cannot for the life of me give a concrete example of why I don’t trust him. I just plain don’t. We have been on many runs together and I have always had the feeling that he wasn’t so much watching my back as wondering if he could get away with stabbing something into it. He kills zombies without blinking an eye and on the surface is a great choice for this mission.
Call it a gut instinct.
Big Al must have his reasons and mine is not to reason why and all that shit but I would be happier if he wasn’t along for this particular ride.
On the other hand, they included Cassandra.
We have been on a lot of runs together and we make a good team. She is gay, black and about fifty and has an even more fucked up sense of humor than I do which makes her profoundly in need of professional help. It also makes her funny as hell.
Besides, one of the few perks of the zombie apocalypse is that there aren’t any shrinks or lawyers.
Silver linings.
As we stand waiting to be briefed by the big man she blows me a kiss and a lurid wink. She notices Joyce standing next to me and flashes me a predatory smile.
She has one of our few automatic weapons strapped on, a M16 and she has a few extra magazines stuck in her belt. Her side arm is a generic 40 caliber semi auto and she has a large hatchet on in a sling across her chest.
Zombie Extinction Event (Book 1): Suffer The Little Children Page 3