A scream grew in Ira’s throat, but she kept it suppressed. The zombie tore into Isabel as she screamed in pain and agony. Ira felt her stomach clench and her eyes water as she watched one of her best friends being torn apart in front of her.
Ira looked up and saw that most of the slave line fighting off zombies. It was proving unsuccessful, however, as they had nothing more than their bound hands and feet to fend them off. The Rove guards had long since run away with their guns.
There were probably twenty zombies attacking the group, with more coming quickly. Most of the zombies were preoccupied with the slaves who were putting up a fight, while others were devouring the lost, such as Isabel.
One of the zombies, however, saw Ira. She tried to back up on her hands and feet, but she was still bound to Isabel at her waist, who was also tied to thirteen other people. As Ira tried to move away from the approaching zombie, she tugged at Isabel’s body, causing the zombies devouring Isabel to look over at her. They, too, began to crawl toward her. Ira didn’t know what to do. Her head was flooded with options, but she ’couldn’t pick one out. She was paralyzed by all of them.
A knife came from nowhere and cut the rope that attached her to the rest of the slave chain. Ira looked up and saw a young woman with long brown hair standing above her. The woman used a knife to kill the zombie closest to her and reached out a hand to help Ira up. Ira took it.
“We have to run. I don’t have time to remove your bonds, so be careful, and don’t trip,” the woman said as she took out another zombie.
Ira wasn’t sure what was going on, but when the woman who saved her began to run where the zombies weren’t as thick, Ira followed.
She had just enough slack in the bonds at her feet to fast walk without difficulty. She was still faster than the zombies, and the woman who saved her was slow enough to reach Ira should she need her assistance.
Ira was able to stay out of most of the zombies way, and those she wasn’t able to avoid, the woman would clear out. Most of the zombies had their attention on the feast of fourteen slaves. Their screams filled the air. Ira did her best to block them out, but she could feel her emotions welling up inside her. Tears threatened to flow from her eyes, but she fought them back. She had to focus on getting off the road.
The woman in front of her reached the end of the road and began descending down the side, crossing the ditch. Ira reached the shoulder of the road, close behind. The woman climbed up the other side of the ditch. Ira looked behind her, and saw that the zombies were beginning follow. She was like a wounded gazelle, unable to escape. She limped as fast as she could, the bonds around her ankles keeping her feet close.
“Wait!” she yelled out to the woman. Ira’s hair stuck to her sweaty, bloody face. She looked behind her, and the zombies were relentlessly marching toward her. She turned back around to call out for the woman again, but as she turned her head, she saw a flash run past her.
She followed the blur as the woman lunged at the zombies, hacking at their rotten flesh with a machete. Rotten blood and flesh sprayed onto the back of Ira’s neck as she reached the edge of the road. She began to go down into the ditch, but lost her footing and tripped. She rolled over once before coming to a rest in the shallow ditch. She had to take a moment to catch her breath, as the stumble knocked it out of her.
Arms wrapped around her shoulders as she was the woman who’d saved her twice now pulled her up the other side of the ditch. “Get up!” she shouted. “We have to run. My car isn’t that far.”
Hope fluttered in Ira. If she could just reach the car with the woman, she’d be safe. She began hobbling up the other side of the ditch, her rescuer keeping a grip on her bicep to keep her from falling. Ira saw a small, tan-colored, old truck sitting just a few feet away, the driver’s door open and engine idling.
Ira clenched her teeth and hobbled toward the truck as fast as she could. Blood from the wounds she sustained dripped down into her eyes. She wiped it away using her sweaty arm.
Just a few inches away from the passenger side door, Ira reached out for the handle and opened it. She clambered into the seat, having to do an awkward hop to get in thanks to her bound arms and legs. She slammed the door behind her and turned in her seat to see that the woman who saved her was already in and putting the truck in reverse.
The truck peeled out before doing a sharp turn to face the opposite direction. The truck rocked back and forth, and for a split second, Ira thought the truck would flip over. The woman showed no fear on her face. Just determination to get out of there.
Ira looked in the side mirror and saw the zombies stumble into the ditch, trying to chase after the truck. She looked past them and to the horde that gathered around where the other Rove slaves were. She thought she could see a hand reaching out of the pile, trying to escape. But soon the hand was covered by another zombie, and Ira wasn’t so sure if it was real or just her imagination.
She turned her eyes back to the small field in front of her. After a hundred yards or so, Ira and her savior reached a small road. Going left would have led them back toward Dallas, while right would lead them further outside of Dallas.
To Ira’s relief, the woman turned right.
“Thank you,” Ira said.
“You’re welcome,” the young woman said. She gestured toward the handcuffs and rope tied to Ira’s feet. “Once we’re clear I’ll pull over and get those off you.”
“Thank you.” Ira realized that she’d just said thanks twice, and for some reason it embarrassed her.“I mean, for getting this off me,” she said.
The woman chuckled to herself as she brushed her long brown hair behind her right ear. “What’s your name?”
Ira hesitated for a moment before answering. “Ira. Ira Dever. And yours?”
“Ashley Finch.”
Chapter Thirteen
Miles
I sat on the couch in John’s room, staring at the floor. I was oblivious to the world around me until I heard a knock at the door.
John looked up from the book he was reading and looked at me.
I shrugged and crossed the room to the door, looking through the peephole. I saw a man standing there in a gray T-shirt that was tucked into a pair of camo cargo pants.
I opened the door. “Can I help you?” I asked
The young man smiled. He looked to be in his twenties, and his hair was cut short. The stubble on his cheeks shifted as he smiled to greet me. “Good afternoon, Miles. My name is Tim. I’m here because Mr. Griggs, head of operations for Bunker Bravo, would like a word with you.”
I turned my head around and looked at John, a way of telling him to “get a load of this.”
John smiled. He closed his book and set it down on the coffee table. He stood up and began walking over to me. “You, one of the big guys will see us? Didn’t do anything wrong, did we?”
“Of course not. He would just like a word with you.”
“Well, we’d be happy to speak with him. However, we’re going to want to bring to our friend Mila along with us,” I said.
“Mr. Griggs requested you and your partner. He didn’t say anything about this girl, Mila,” Tim said.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I won’t go unless Mila can come too.” It had been a while since I’d seen Mila, and I didn’t want her to get the feeling that we were ignoring her. If she found out that we went and saw the leader of this place without her, she wouldn’t be too happy about it. I viewed her as a strong ally, both inside the bunker and out. I did not want to get on her bad side.
“I’ll have to see what I can do,” Tim said.
“When you do, you know where to find us,” I said as I shut the door.
I looked through the peephole to make sure Tim was gone.
“Wow, the leader of this place? That seems like a big deal,” John said.
“Yeah, it is a pretty big deal, I think. Somebody running this kind of operation must have a lot of power.”
“So what’s our angle?” John said as
he leaned up against the bar that separated the kitchenette from the living area of the apartment.
I leaned against the back of the couch and began to think. “We need to show them that we’re not the enemy, but that we also don’t want to be their soldiers. We’re their allies,” I said.
John nodded his head. “So you’re gonna ask if we can leave?”
“Yeah, of course. This place is awesome, and I would love to live here, but our friends need us, and we can’t just sit around here living this luxurious life while they are out there trying not to get slaughtered by the Roves.”
“If if that’s what you want to do, we’ll do it.”
I was very thankful to have a friend like John. I needed him to have my back, and he knew that I would always have his.
“What about Mila?” he asked. “She seems like a loose cannon.”
“Everyone she cared for just got slaughtered by strange creatures, creatures that these aliens know anything about.”
“Yeah, what the hell is up with that? I mean, Genari? They’re just living here with humans like it’s no big deal.”
“I have no idea what’s going on with that. It’s such a normal thing here that nobody’s thought to explain it to us yet,” I said.
“That’s definitely something we should ask this Mr. Griggs character.”
“Don’t worry,” I said as I stood up from leaning on the couch. “We’re going to be learning a lot of things here pretty soon.”
Chapter Fourteen
Miles
Mila, John, and I walked down the corridors of Bunker Bravo, following Tim as he led us to Mr. Griggs’ office.
The look on Mila’s face frightened me. It was stone cold and filled with anger. I remembered what John called her earlier, “a loose cannon.” That was an apt description, and I worried that coming along with us maybe wasn’t the best idea. Still, I didn’t want to leave her out. It would have been wrong not to bring her. She was a part of our group now whether she liked it or not, and that meant that there was no way I could leave her out of the loop.
Our footsteps echoed around the concrete corridor. The walls of the hallway were round. The corridor was large too. It was probably thirty to forty feet tall and just as wide.
“Why are these hallways so large?” I asked Tim. I asked to break the silence, but also because I was a bit curious.
“This is one of the eight main corridors, all of them spreading from a large central hub that is connected to an outer ring. There are other corridors connecting the eight large ones. They are a lot smaller and less round,” Tim explained as we walked.
I waited a couple of steps for him to continue but quickly realized that he was finished with his explanation. “You ’didnt answer my question.”
“You’re observant,” Tim said. I couldn’t see his face, but just from the sound of his voice I could tell he was wearing a smirk on his face.
I didn’t press him with more questions, and we continued walked down the large corridor in silence. We passed by people and Genari occasionally, but for the most part, the corridor was empty. Everybody must have been navigating the smaller ones or were in the central hub.
I couldn’t believe that a few hundred feet above my head was the shell of the Earth. There could be a zombie feeding on a human, hundreds of feet above me, and they’d both be completely oblivious to the world beneath them. I felt guilty for a moment, but then it was gone.
Tim held open a large door that looked as if it belonged to a safe. We walked through the doorway and entered the office of Mr. Griggs, Head of Bunker Bravo Operations.
His office was large and filled with all sorts of trinkets. Paintings hung on the wall. Where there wasn’t a painting, there was a bookshelf that was filled with books and other statues and strange artifacts.
Mr. Griggs himself sat in a large chair behind a large desk, upon which sat a computer and all sorts of different papers and things. He wore a pair of glasses and a gray button-up shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to his elbows. He had short white hair and smiled at us with shiny teeth as we entered the room.
“Welcome,” he said as he stood from his seat. He walked around the desk and shook our hands. “I’m very happy you came. I’ve heard a lot about you three,” he said.
“We’ve barely told your people anything about us,” Mila said.
I tried my best to not give her a look. Instead, I stood there smiling at Mr. Griggs while wishing in my head that Mila would leave the talking to me. She definitely wasn’t a fan of this place.
“Of course not, but I hope we can change that,” Griggs said. He turned and gestured toward his desk. “Please have a seat.”
We sat down in the seats across from his desk. They were heavily cushioned and very comfortable. We told him our names, and he told us his even though he knew we already knew it.
“Would you like anything to drink?” Mr. Griggs asked as he sat down in his chair and began pouring himself a glass of water.
I fought to keep the frustration out of my voice as I spoke. “No sir, we’d really just like to get to the things at hand. We’re very overwhelmed by all this,” I said, looking around the room. “We really would like to know what’s going on.”
Griggs nodded his head as he took a sip from his glass of water. “Of course,” he said. He leaned back in his chair. “Well, as you know, this is Bunker Bravo. It was designed by the United States Government in case of an apocalyptic event. A small group of people—myself included—were brought down here when the Genari arrived. Just enough people to get the place running. Once things topside took a turn for the worse and the virus began to spread, more essential government staff—soldiers, politicians, scientists, and their families—were brought down here. Some Genari were sent to live here as well.”
“Yes, that’s what we’re interested in. I thought all the Genari were turned into Xenomortises?” I asked.
“Were all the humans turned into zombies?” Mr. Griggs asked with an amused smile. “Of course not. The Genari are a kind, peaceful race. They are just as guilty for the viruses spread as the humans. They deserved a place in our Bunker just as much as humans did. Besides, we still had a lot to learn from each other.”
“What kind of things did you learn?” John asked.
Mr. Griggs chuckled. “Well, I don’t think I should be divulging those things right at the moment. I can’t be telling you all of our secrets yet.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of this guy. He seemed nice but manipulative. I could understand that he didn’t want to tell us what they learned from the Genari, but he seemed so coy about it all. Very high and mighty. Still, I guess being the guy in charge of a place like this was pretty cool. He definitely had some bragging rights.
“You keep calling this place Bunker Bravo. Why? Are you giving yourself a pat on the back?” I asked.
Mr. Griggs forced a smile, and I could already tell this was a question that annoyed him. He probably had to answer it often. “No, there are…a number of bunkers across the United States. They each have their own letter of the phonetic alphabet designated to them. So for example, Bunker Bravo, Bunker Charlie, Bunker Delta, et cetera.”
I looked at Griggs for a moment, my mouth slightly open. Apparently, there were a lot of bunkers out there. I didn’t even know what to do with this information or how to process it. It was strange to learn of this whole other world right beneath the feet of the one that was dying.
I finally found the words to speak. “We asked this earlier of Trevor,” I said, eying Mila making sure she wasn’t about to freak out like she did earlier. “But why are you telling us this? Isn’t telling top secret government information to people who broke into your base a bad idea??”
“Bunker,” Griggs said, correcting my usage of the word base, just as Trevor did. “And I’m telling you this because these are things that all of the people who live in Bunker Bravo know.”
“Yes, but we don’t live here,” I said calmly.
> “Miles, we’re not interested in keeping prisoners. We’re also not interested in killing people. This place was designed to preserve humanity. You finding your way in was an anomaly. Nobody was ever supposed to find their way in here. However, here you are. We’re allowing you the opportunity to live in a place that offers the closest thing to normalcy there is anymore. So, yes. You do live here.”
Mila opened her mouth to say something but stopped herself. I was very grateful for that, and I continued. “Mr. Griggs, of course we’re very thankful for this opportunity. However, we have friends and family on the outside who need our help. They’re in danger, and we have to save them. You see, our home was taken by these people called the Roves. They’re a ruthless gang that love to kill other humans almost as much as the zombies do. They’ve taken my home that I, along with others, have made, and they’ve taken those who weren’t able to escape as their slaves. I can’t just sit here in this bunker while they’re up there, waiting for me to come save them.”
Griggs sat back in his chair, and put one of his hands on his face as he thought about what I’d just told him. “I can understand the moral predicament you’ve found yourself in. I can only imagine what something like that must be like.
“However, I can’t let you leave before I know that I can trust you to keep the location of this Bunker a secret. We’ve worked very hard to keep this place a secret, and save for a few mishaps, we’ve been successful. If the location of this Bunker were to get into the hands of the wrong people—say, these Roves that you speak of—it would be a disaster. That is why, for the time being, you must stay in the bunker.”
I smirked, and I could tell that it threw Mr. Griggs off. I had an ace up my sleeve, and I was getting ready to pull it out. “Mr. Griggs,” I began, “how often do people leave the bunker?”
He eyes me suspiciously, but he decided to play along. “Every few days a group will go out and scout the area and do other sorts of missions.”
Retaliation: The Mortis Desolation, Book Two Page 4