Zompoc Survivor: Exodus

by Ben S Reeder

  “Negative,” Adams said suddenly. “I repeat, negative sir. Infected are one thing, but that is an order I will not follow. Yes, sir, I understand who it comes from, and that does not make it a lawful order. No, sir. Understood sir.” He threw the headphones down and spat something I couldn’t hear, but suspected it was something unpleasant. The graveled roadway rose to meet the concrete bed of Bennett St., and Porsche turned the truck’s nose east. Cassie pulled up behind her, her Jeep idling easily.

  “What’s the plan Captain?” Carter asked from his place next to the tailgate.

  “We secure the secondary and tertiary objectives, then head back to base.” The soldier across from me looked back toward Cassie’s truck, nothing more than a shifting of his eyes, and his face seemed to cloud. “Maximum discretion, people.” Without another word, all but Vasquez and Adams grabbed gear before they got out of the bed of the truck and spread out a little, two on each side, one facing forward, the other to the rear. In the dim light, I could barely make out Adams’ expression as he turned toward me, putting his face in shadow. Something in my gut tightened, an instinct that I’d learned to listen to in the past few hours.

  “Mister Stewart, thank you for the ride,” Adams said as Vasquez turned toward me but made no move to get out of the truck. “We certainly owe you our lives.” In the instant before he moved, his stance changed, something I probably would have missed if I wasn’t already expecting something to go wrong. Without a second thought, I grabbed his vest and pushed myself backward, pushing Vasquez out of the bed of the truck along with me. I landed on Vasquez, and Adams landed on me.

  “Porsche! Go!” I yelled. I heard Cassie gun the engine on her Jeep, and Porsche hit the gas, sending her truck forward in a screech of burning rubber. Cassie’s Jeep shot past a split second later, and I could hear the pounding of boots and cursing around us. The dwindling red dots of their tail-lights down Bennett was almost as rewarding as being with them. Cassie knew the way to my house, and Porsche was smart enough to follow her lead. I had kept my end of the bargain, and Nate would keep his. Maya and Amy had a shot at surviving.

  Adams pulled me to my feet with a curse. “You son of a bitch!” he snarled in my face.

  “Sorry I screwed up your snatch and grab,” I said as a strange sort of elation bubbled up inside me. Even if they killed me right there, I’d already won. My girls were safe, my friend was safe and so was Nate’s family. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Adams was likely to do that. He was a Green Beret, a consummate professional. His trade might have been war, but somehow, I knew that he wouldn’t kill me in cold blood. He shook me once, then pushed me away. I staggered back, barely keeping my feet. Then he was turning back toward me, and I barely registered his fist moving before it slammed into my jaw. So, I thought as my face plummeted toward the concrete, I guess hitting me is still an option.

  I came to with a headache and a throbbing in my jaw that made dropping back into oblivion pretty damn inviting. My shoulders ached and something was digging into my wrists, probably the same something that was holding them behind my back. I opened my eyes to find myself in a cage, stripped down to my boxers. Around me I could see bleachers and scoreboards, as my senses slowly told me I was in a basketball court. To my left I could see a set of tables covered with boxes and cables, and in front of me stood black clad men with assault rifles held at the ready, barrels down and fingers outside the trigger guards. They didn’t have the look of soldiers, and a couple had goatees and hair longer than military regs allowed sticking out from under their ball caps. A dry, rasping laugh came from my right, and I turned to see a man strapped to an angled table that held him almost upright in the cell next to mine. Only bars separated us, and some part of me didn’t think that was enough. As my eyes focused on him, I changed my guess. He might have been a man once, but whatever he was now, ‘man’ wasn’t the right word for it. His eyes were milky white, and his skin had the gray pallor of death. His face was gaunt, exposing every line of the skull beneath it, and the few clumps of hair on his scalp looked like they had faded to a dull gray. I admit it, I stared at him, and some part of my brain sort of locked up as it tried to force what I was seeing to make sense. Then it turned its head and looked straight at me.

  Oh yeah, my brain suddenly told itself, zombies.

  “What the hell are you lookin’ at, asshole?” the thing asked. Its voice was a raspy parody of human speech, but it was at least understandable. “You eyeballin’ me?”

  “Kinda hard not to,” I said with an instinctive animosity. The urge to kill this thing was growing in the back of my thoughts, and I had no idea why. Even if I did know why, I didn’t care. All that mattered was that this thing ended up dead. The world would be a better place without the thing in the next cell in it, of that I was certain.

  “I’m gonna fuck you up when I get out of here,” the thing said to me. That pissed me off even more, and I felt my lips curl back from my teeth. My heart started pounding as I gave him a cold glare.

  “That’s something I’d like to see you pull off,” another voice intruded. I turned to the front of my cage to see Captain Adams standing next to a man in black fatigues and a baseball cap. His clothes were unmarred by any insignia, and he wore a massive handgun in a tactical holster on his right thigh. The chrome slide contrasted with the black grips, and by the shape of the slde, I guessed he was carrying a Desert Eagle of some caliber or another. “You know, I was surprised that this little shit stain of a city rated three targets. And here we have two of them.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “The man asking the questions, Mr. Stewart. That’s all you need to know. You can call me ‘Sir’ if you need to address me by some kind of name.”

  “Sure thing asshole,” I said. Adams suppressed a laugh, but a snort still got through.

  “Let’s start with the basics. How long have you been colluding with Nathan Reid?” he asked. Adams face went blank at that, and I decided to test a theory.

  “Captain Reid helped me with a couple of my books. That’s common knowledge to anyone who read them,” I answered casually. Blackshirt’s eyes narrowed and I could see his jaw clench, while Adams’ mouth quirked a little, like he was trying to hide a smile. His eyes flicked to Blackshirt for a moment, and the grin started to form.

  “Don’t try to bullshit me, Stewart. You attacked the men sent to retrieve you, you knew we were after you, and because of you, a pair of fugitives are running loose in this city. Now, stop playing games with me. Where is Reid?”

  “A mother and her kid are fugitives? What did they do? Skip a PTA meeting or something?”

  “Where is he?”

  “No idea,” I answered.

  “We know you were in contact with him today. We have your phone. Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll have you stripped naked and thrown outside the wall.”

  “I’ve been out in the shit all night, and I started with next to nothing,” I said. “Come back when you can make a real threat.” From my right came the wheezing laughter I’d heard earlier.

  “How about I come in there and work your god damn kneecaps over with a ballpeen hammer?” he said with an impotent snarl. “How’s that for a threat?”

  “Come on in,” I said. “I’d hold the door for you, but I’m kind of tied up right now.” His eyes went to the door, then back to me. Behind him, Adams shook his head.

  “Talk to me or I’ll find your girlfriend and splatter her brains on the wall while you watch. Maybe we’ll do her little girl, too. She’ll die screaming for you to help her.” My eyes narrowed as he said that. They didn’t need my phone. They had been monitoring it all day. My conversation with Amy hadn’t been in my texts, but he knew she looked to me for help. The animosity I’d been feeling for the thing in the cell next to me had no trouble switching targets.

  “Give it up, Keyes,” Adams said. “He’s getting more intel out of you than you’re getting out of him.”

  “Fuck you, Adams,” Keyes said. �
��When you have my permission to have an opinion, I’ll tell you what it is in a memo. I’ll conduct my interrogations any way I see fit.”

  “Tell him,” Adams said to me.

  “You’re afraid to come into these cells. You’ve been monitoring my cell phone all day. The walking cadaver over there is your primary target, Nate Reid’s family is the secondary, and I’m the tertiary target because of my association with them. That tells me that you think he knows something, and that you need leverage on him to keep him quiet or under control, which tells me you’re probably to blame for the zombie clusterfuck going on out there or you know who is. You’re carrying a chromed Desert Eagle on your hip instead of a Sig Sauer or a Browning, so you’re not military, and I’m pretty sure you’re not even really government. That makes you either a mercenary or private security with a tendency to over-compensate. Did I miss anything?” I asked Adams. He turned to Keyes, who gave him a glare and stalked out of the room.

  “Your story checked out,” Adams said after a door slammed nearby. “The detachment at Kickapoo reported a Nissan truck showing up and drawing the bulk of the infected away from the front barrier before they evac’d.”

  “Don’t expect me to roll over now that you’re going all good-cop on me,” I said. Adams shrugged.

  “Whatever Keyes wants to know, he can get on his own. I don’t know who he really works for, but it sure as hell ain’t Homeland Security. What I do know is that I served with Nate Reid when we were both Rangers, back in oh-four. He’s a good man, and any man he trusts his family with is okay in my book. My team is on the next chopper out of here. I just wanted to say thanks for the help. And sorry about punching you.”

  “You were doing your job, man,” I shrugged. “You have one hell of a right hook.”

  “Aw, isn’t that sweet,” the thing in the cage next to me croaked. “You two got a regular little bro-mance goin’ on.”

  “What the hell is that thing, anyway?” I asked, tilting my head toward the next cell.

  “Mike Deacon, Springfield’s version of Patient Zero. First case reported. At first they thought it was some guy on bathsalts or something like that. Got arrested after he tore his girlfriend’s throat out with his teeth. Best guess is he’s the primary carrier, and she woke up in the morgue at St John’s, then infected the rest of the city through the people she attacked. This shit spread’s so damn quick, though, it’s hard to say what really happened.”

  “But he can still talk…and think?” I asked.

  “Yeah, ain’t that fucked up?” Adams said. I looked back over at Deacon, and fought the urge to try to kill him. “He’s the tenth one we’ve captured. The folks at the CDC figure every city has one.”

  “Where did he get it from?” I asked as I turned back to Adams. He gave me a perplexed look, and opened his mouth to say something. A second later, he closed it, then looked back at Deacon. The living zombie started to laugh again as a door opened off to my left.

  “Captain Adams!” a soldier in full combat gear called out with a note of panic in his voice. “They’re hitting the fences!” From outside, the harsh buzz of a klaxon sounded, and I heard a tinny voice calling for all personnel to report to their posts. Adams cursed and sprinted for the door, unslinging his M4 as he went. He gestured to two of the men standing guard and told them to stay put, and the rest followed him to the door.

  “Adams!” I called out. He turned at the door and looked back at me. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Missouri State University!” he said, then bolted out.

  “You’re about to die, and you ask where you are?” Deacon asked. “You should have asked him to let you out. You would have lived a little longer.” He looked down at the straps that held him down and flexed his arm. There was a groaning sound as metal strained against the force applied to it, and the two guards stepped forward, gun butts to their shoulders.

  “I have that covered,” I told him. My fingers curled up and I touched the bonds on my wrist. A narrow plastic band encircled my wrists, and I felt the nub of the head on the outside of my right wrist. Nate had showed me how he’d escaped from zip ties in Iraq, and he’d showed me how easy it could actually be…if you knew what you were doing. When he’d taught me to do it, it was supposedly to make the story more authentic, though he swore it would come in handy if I was ever abducted. Either way, the principles were the same, and at the moment, who I was going to be escaping from was likely to be changing. The groan of metal came again, and I heard one of the soldiers call out.

  “Stand down or I will open fire!” he barked. There was a snap of leather when Deacon pulled his arm free of the table. I tried to ignore his efforts and focused on getting the fastener of the zip tie worked around until it was in the middle of the gap between my wrists and away from my body. The rounded edge of the chair back made that harder, but I finally managed to work it most of the way there. Deacon laughed and I heard another snap, then the staccato explosion of gunfire in a large, bare room.

  “Is he dead?” the other guard asked. I looked over to see Deacon laying back against the table with three closely spaced holes in the center of his chest. Black blood trickled from each one, but not enough to make me believe he’d been alive when he’d been shot.

  “Fucker took three to the chest, man,” his buddy said confidently. “He ain’t gettin’ up from that.”

  “They get up,” I said. “Put one through his forehead to make sure.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the shooter said. “Call it in,” he told his partner.

  “Mr. Sikes is gonna be pissed,” his partner said as he thumbed his mic. From outside, the sound of gunfire erupted, at first sporadic cracks from assault rifles, then longer bursts from the bigger guns punctuating the radio chatter between the guards and whoever they were talking to. When the slower thump-thump-thump-thump! of heavy machine guns started up, the two men looked at each other with the first signs of concern on their faces. I’d only heard one gun that sounded like that, the M2 or “Ma Deuce”, a fifty caliber machine gun that had been in the US military armory since World War I. Even an Air Force Communications Signals Intelligence specialist picked up a basic knowledge of firearms, and a tour in Iraq made sure I got to see and hear them a lot closer than most people, even if I’d barely left the Green Zone in Baghdad. I could just imagine the amount of damage the heavy gun was doing, but some part of me knew it wasn’t nearly enough. There were more than a hundred and fifty thousand people in Springfield, and no matter how many rounds the military had, I was guessing they didn’t have more than a few hundred men and women crammed onto the containable areas of Missouri State University. And I was most likely in one of the larger defensible places, McDonald Arena. There was a tunnel that connected McDonald to the football stadium, which would make a decent landing field or staging area, if not an ideal one. With the heavy iron fence that circled the field, zombies and ghouls would have a hard time getting in if they had fortified the choke points, but it was far from impregnable if they all decided to rush it at the same time. The problem was that zombies didn’t think. Even ghouls were outsmarted by door handles. What had made them all rush the fence now? I turned my head and looked over at Deacon. Instead of feeling happy that he was dead, I felt a pressure behind my eyes, like I needed to dismember him and burn the parts. Some deep instinct told me he was part of what was going on.

  The sound of feet on the hardwood of the court’s floor drew my attention away from Deacon. Four men in green scrubs followed a woman in a white lab coat. Two of them wheeled a gurney while the third and fourth carried bulky cases. The doctor looked at the two guards when she got to the door of the cage, and the shooter pulled a set of keys from his belt and unlocked it for her.

  “Keep that door open, gentlemen. We won’t be a moment,” she ordered as the four men hustled inside. “I want tissue samples, blood and saliva as well as mucus. Get me a sample of brain tissue, too.” she said. One of the orderlies carrying a case nodded, and they went to the b
ody with cold efficiency. As they unstrapped Deacon’s body, I felt my muscles tense slightly. If I was going to try to make an escape…and if I could survive a gaping chest wound…this would be the moment when I’d make my move. Something told me Deacon could.

  “He’s not dead,” I said as they laid him out on the floor. One of the orderlies put his hand to Deacon’s neck, then looked at me with a smile.

  “He doesn’t have a pulse. Seems pretty dead to me.” He chuckled as another orderly laid out a body bag next to the corpse. “If he was gonna go zombie on us, he would have by now.”