Grave New World (Book 3): Dead Men Don't Skip

by S. P. Blackmore

  “Help him,” I said to Tony. “Stop him!”

  Tony didn’t move.

  Logan had started throwing punches, his fists thwacking against Renati’s face.

  “Stop him,” Alyssa whispered.

  She’s still herself.

  She’s still a person.

  Renati had prescribed the drug that did it.

  And I had given it to her.

  What had we done?

  And how could we undo it?

  You can’t undo it. Death is pretty much final, even now.

  Renati curled into the fetal position.

  Tony just stared.

  Well, let it not be said I don’t have my moments of reckless bravery. I pried myself free of Tony’s grasp, took a flying leap, and crashed onto Logan’s back. I locked my arms around his throat and clung tightly, trying to cut off his air supply as he’d cut off mine.

  Logan heaved his shoulders and bent.

  Suddenly I was on my back, stars dancing over my eyes and the wind knocked out of me. Of course he’d thrown me off. Fucking trained soldier.

  I thought I heard Alyssa calling for us to stop again, but we were beyond hearing her. A black blur shot past me—Tony throwing himself on top of Logan and another fistfight breaking out in earnest. I made myself sit up, and reached for Renati, who was still wheezing on the ground.

  The two men grappled for a moment.

  I checked Renati’s face. Nothing broken, though he’d have several ugly bruises to show for his troubles. I pushed myself to my feet, lurched toward the fighting males. Logan had Tony in a headlock.

  I jumped on Logan again.

  He let go of Tony long enough to grab at me. “You are like a goddamn howler monkey,” he said, reaching overhead. His hands tangled partially in my hair, and he gave me a painful yank, half wrenching me off.

  I screeched.

  Tony, abruptly freed, took the opportunity to plow his elbow right into Logan’s gut.

  The soldier let out a rush of air, then went over backwards.

  On top of me.

  He just lay there for a few seconds, squashing me.

  “Stop!”

  Oh, fuck. I knew that voice.

  “Don’t lay another hand on him!”

  Fuck.

  Keller had arrived. Judging by the sound of boots I heard, he’d brought a lot of friends—specifically soldiers carrying guns. Lots of guns.

  Well, look who finally came to collect Logan. About damn time.

  Safeties clicked off.

  “Hands up,” Keller barked.

  Feet stopped next to us. Logan was pulled off me. I tried to gulp down some air, then found at least five machine guns pointed directly at my face.

  I gulped. Why were they aimed at me?

  “Wait,” Renati said. “Wait, this isn’t—”

  Click. The doctor suddenly had a gun on him, too. It seemed like no one was going to have a very good day.

  Keller himself had a pistol aimed at Tony’s forehead. “Commander McKnight,” he said, his voice devoid of its usual layer of strained politeness. “Couldn’t keep your nose clean, could you?”

  “Captain—”

  Keller struck him across the face with the pistol. Tony’s head whipped around, a portion of his cheek going red almost immediately.

  “Don’t talk,” Keller said. “Just keep your mouth shut before you all make this worse on yourselves. Your neighbor filed quite the noise complaint about you last night. I come here in good faith to assure myself it wasn’t true, and I find you assaulting one of my soldiers? Harming a doctor?”

  “Captain—”

  Keller whacked him again.

  Tony just grunted.

  “I said don’t talk.”

  “Wait,” Renati said. “Captain, this is—”

  “You may go about your business, Renati,” Keller said, not even looking at the researcher. “We’ll sort them out in the brig.”

  That acted as a sort of signal to his men. Two of them lifted me up, securing me between their fatigue-clad bodies. I looked for help—for something in Renati, who stood there looking horrified, and in Logan, who was getting pulled to his feet himself, albeit in a much gentler fashion.

  Keller paused in front of Alyssa, studying her.

  “Doctor,” he said.

  The researcher lifted his head. “Captain?”

  “Is she deceased?”

  Renati’s gaze darted around, real fear blossoming. “Sir,” he said. “She appears to be.”

  Keller continued to stare at Alyssa. She didn’t show any sort of reaction to the statement…no, wait. She was looking at her hands. Did she see how pale and stiff they were? How hard she had to work to bend her fingers?

  The captain must have noticed her struggling, but he did not seem overly concerned by it. “Congratulations, Doctor,” he said. “You’ve done a hell of a job on her.”

  Renati absorbed the praise, then began shaking his head violently. “Sir. This isn’t my work. This was Jacoby’s project, I just—”

  “I don’t care if Jacoby did the bulk of the work. He’s dead. You’re not.” Keller doffed his cap. “I’ll be back to chat about this. But for now, please accept my sincerest congratulations. You may have just stopped this horror in its tracks.”

  The soldiers pulled Tony and I off in one direction, and Logan in another. We left Renati and poor, dead Alyssa standing there, watching us go.

  I felt their stares long after we’d left the pen area behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ah, prison. Exactly where I wanted to be.

  Frankly, a few more days in lockdown sounded downright heavenly after the amount of shit we’d all just seen. I was perfectly willing to trade wandering the streets, dealing with talking zombies and running around without a gun for some good iron bars and the relative safety of the indoors. Iron bars actually sounded damned reassuring.

  And they might have been, if they’d stuck us in a proper jail cell.

  Instead, we were hurled into what had clearly once been the lobby of a quasi-fancy firm, filled with giant plush chairs and a few cots that had probably been hastily added during the initial apocalypse, when the place had no doubt doubled as a place to seek shelter. The large receptionist’s desk still had a computer on it, though the thing was off—probably useless, even though the room itself still seemed to have power.

  It was also occupied.

  “Well, well, well,” Gloria Fey said, glancing up when the uniformed guards hauled us inside. “I was wondering when you guys would piss him off enough to get tossed in with us.”

  “Bring him here,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Wait,” Dax exclaimed behind me. Someone must have pushed him, because suddenly he was right next to me, alarm plain on his face. “This is a mistake,” he said. “Whatever they did, I wasn’t involved. I barely know them!”

  I stood there swaying for a moment, listening to Dax plead his case to the soldier. “Gloria,” I said. “You’re okay. And Jay?”

  A hand stuck up from a bed tucked against one of the corners. “Hi,” Vijay said. “We’re good.”

  A few days ago I would have flung my arms around them both and squeezed until they complained about lack of air. Now I just stood there swaying, unable to really move, visions of Alyssa and her staring eyes floating across my imagination.

  “I swear,” Dax said, “these people are fucking crazy. I had nothing to do with it…”

  Keller’s henchman stuck his hand over Dax’s mouth, effectively cutting him off mid-protest, and then shoved him aside. “You will all stay here until your sentence is carried out,” he said.

  “There’s been a mistake,” Dax said.

  “Sentence?” Tony demanded. “I demand a trial. Or a court martial.”

  “You want a court martial?” Keller shoved his minion aside and stomped into the lobby to stare at us. “You’re accused of assaulting a medical professional, conspiring to stage a coup, and aggravating the
undead. You’re guilty. Sentence to be carried out ASAP. There. Court martial complete.”

  Tony eyeballed him. “You’re not a JAG.”

  Keller opened his mouth, realized he didn’t need to argue with a prisoner, and whirled around. He stormed out with his men and the door slammed shut behind them. Several locks twisted into place.

  I’d started my time in Hastings in prison, and now it looked like I might end it there. How charming. I’d come full circle.

  I plunked myself down on the nearest unused cot. On the plus side, there appeared to be plenty of sheets and pillows, including a huge pile of extra ones on a cot in the back. I pulled several of them on top of myself.

  “Vibeke,” Gloria said. “Tough day?”

  I grunted a confirmation. I should have hugged her, at least. Should have been happy to see her alive. But right now she was just one more fucked up part of what had turned out to be an an extremely fucked up day.

  “Will one of you tell me why they dragged me out of work and threw me into jail?” Dax said. “What the fuck did you guys do?”

  “I suspect it had something to do with Vibeke helping the mad scientist set up his next bullshit experiment.” Tony swung around to look at Dax. “You do remember Logan Andrews coming over in a tizzy last night? It got worse.”

  Dax turned about five different shades of red, and then he whipped his head around to glare at me. “Can’t you find normal medical professionals to hang out with?”

  “He said it was an antibiotic!”

  Vijay unfolded himself from his spot by the corner and straightened up, his back cracking softly as he did so. “I feel like there’s a bigger story we’re not getting,” he said. “Antibiotics? Mad scientist? What the hell is going on out there?”

  “I have no fucking idea,” I said. I looked around our sad little lobby again. “So what is this supposed to be? This isn’t jail.”

  “Oh, this is solitary confinement. Except it’s not solitary. Also, I think their real brig got overrun.” Gloria offered up a humorless smile. She stretched out a hand, gesturing to our admittedly interesting surroundings. “We’re in the lobby of MaxCorp Tests, which I believe distributed some of those standardized tests the news kept covering.”

  I remembered those stories. I remembered being glad I had gotten out of school before they implemented that next level of bullshit.

  “Not much to the place, but the bathroom works. And no zombies, so really, what can you ask for?” Gloria grinned at us. “What’d you do? The soldiers won’t talk to us, but sometimes I can hear them talking to each other. I hear he’s got some weird arena shit going on where he makes people fight each other. Is everyone outside really eating pastrami and nothing else?”

  “You mean you’re not eating pastrami?” Dax asked.

  Gloria shook her head. “We have MREs. None of them are particularly good, but no pastrami.”

  “We had freeze-dried ice cream this morning,” Vijay offered.

  For a moment, Dax looked more offended by the pastrami situation than being unjustly imprisoned.

  “Those sons of bitches,” Tony muttered.

  “It’s true? All you have is pastrami?”

  I nodded. “Pastrami in the morning. Pastrami in the evening. Pastrami for a midnight snack.”

  “You should all be way fatter.”

  We should all have been dead, too, but I didn’t bring that up. With my luck it would happen sooner rather than later.

  “So…why are you here?” Gloria asked. “I still don’t understand what you did.”

  We all looked at each other.

  “You tell her,” Tony said.

  I shrugged. “Keller has talking zombies.”

  It was probably the last thing any of them expected.

  Gloria blinked. “He…what?”

  “What?” Dax demanded.

  “I wouldn’t say Keller has them,” Tony clarified. “I mean, they’re on the premises. They’re here and such. I don’t think they’re answering to him, though.”

  “It’s just the one so far,” I muttered. “Maybe the others don’t say anything.”

  “Talking zombies are what got you in trouble?” Gloria shifted her weight around, no doubt searching for the questions she might have asked during her reporting days. The right questions, the ones that would help us get to the bottom of this mystery. But all that came out was, “Did you…did you make them?”

  I suppose it was a reasonable enough question to ask, considering all the rest of the shit we’d managed to get ourselves into. “No, but apparently we aggravated them.”

  “How do we have talking zombies?” Dax squawked. “What do they even have to talk about?”

  “College basketball,” Tony said.

  Dax blinked rapidly. “Really?”

  “No, not fucking really. I only saw the one. She asked for a blanket.”

  “Talking zombies?” Jay asked. “Are they smart?”

  Just thinking about Alyssa and her empty stare made my eyes well up. “She was coherent.”

  “She?”

  “Did…what’s…how? And why?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe Keller’s building an army.”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” an older, deeper voice cut in.

  We all looked toward the other side of the room, where another cot piled high with what I assumed were extra blankets sat. Those extra blankets were in fact a person, and now he sat up, knocking some of them aside. He wore an oversized button-down shirt and a ratty pair of jeans, and a flak jacket lay on the end of his bed.

  He seemed to sense he had our full attention, and offered us a wan half-smile. “The last thing that little shit needs is magical powers over the undead. That’ll be the end of us all.”

  “He didn’t seem too surprised about it,” Tony said. “He must have known something.”

  “Of course he knew something,” the man said. “He was there when Jacoby began his unfortunate work. It was all such a great fucking idea at the time.” He lifted his hands into the air and spoke in a higher tone, no doubt mimicking some unfortunate dead scientist. “Make the dead fight for us! Why the fuck not? We’ll make them smart!” He lowered his hands and resumed speaking in his usual tone. “We all just assumed it would never work. Until it did. It turns out commissioning a zombie is tricky business.”

  “Commissioning?” I asked. “How do you commission a zombie?”

  “Very carefully.” He had a cap pulled down low over his eyes, though he nodded fairly politely in our direction. “So you’re the team from Elderwood I’ve heard so much about,” he said. “I admit, I thought you’d be smarter.”

  “We get that a lot,” I said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Tony muttered. “You know us, but we don’t know you.”

  Gloria gestured to him. “Tony, Dax, Vibeke, this is William Durkee.”

  Durkee. I knew that name. But from where? Some band I’d interviewed?

  No. Something else.

  Captain Durkee?

  I did a double-take.

  “I thought you were dead,” I said. “Everyone says you’re dead.”

  He lifted his arms up so he could inspect his hands. “I don’t appear to be. Although if the dead are now walking and talking, I guess it’s possible I missed a memo somewhere.” He pushed the brim of his hat up to look at us better, and his eyes, while tired and slightly sunken, were most definitely human, alive, and a trifle annoyed. “So, Tony, Dax, and Vibeke, why don’t you tell me what that little fuckwit is doing to my city?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  It was safe to assume napping was out of the question.

  Durkee didn’t move from his bed, so we gathered chairs and cots and formed a rough semi-circle around him. He kept a set of worn, but carefully maintained combat boots in the little living area he had claimed as his own, a surprising contrast to the extremely cheerful purple and red striped socks that graced his feet. His big toe poked out of both of them.

  “You’ll
excuse me if I don’t stand on ceremony,” he said. “I don’t get a lot of visitors. Also, I don’t care.”

  “Completely understandable,” Tony said. “We also do not care.”

  Durkee sort of smirked. “So they talk now. Ah, shit. When did that happen?”

  “About an hour ago,” I said. “Well. Maybe less. A girl died in the Plague Tent last night. I was trying to help her brother find her body…we found her.”

  Alyssa’s colorless eyes appeared again in my mind’s eye.

  “You found her,” Dax repeated. “And…she’s the talking zombie? Are you sure she’s dead?”

  “She’s dead. She didn’t try to bite us or anything. She just seemed…” I paused, trying to conjure up the appropriate adjectives given my poor state of mind. “Confused, I guess. Almost like she was drugged.”

  Gloria, Jay, and Dax stared at me, their mouths hanging open slightly. Durkee seemed interested, but not as shocked as I had expected, which troubled me on a deeper level. The dead weren’t just walking—they were talking. That was worth freaking out over.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Logan was screaming about the drug you gave her,” Tony said. “What was that?”

  “Renati gave them a drug…I guess…apparently it was experimental…”

  Durkee winced at that statement. “Renati? Renati from R&D?”

  Apparently everyone but me realized that entrusting patients to a researcher might not have been the best idea. I ground my teeth and tried to hold onto the flare of anger that shot through me. “You know, you can sit there and look disapproving but what the hell were we supposed to do? Lattimore wouldn’t let us give them anything besides sedatives. They were dying right in front of us! We had to try something…but I guess that something…I…something in the drug changed the way the…the virus…”

  My voice broke. Dax, horrified though he might have been, scooped up my hand and squeezed it.

  Durkee took a breath, and then let it out. “All right. So Renati is working on patients…who’s in charge of R&D now?”

  Tony and Dax looked at me. “Renati,” I said. “Such as it is. He doesn’t do a lot of research anymore. Lattimore has him treating patients.”

  “What about Smith? Albee?”

  I shook my head. “Those names don’t sound familiar. It seems to be just him.”