Wheels' End: Book Four in the Wheels and Zombies series

by M. Van

  I swallowed hard and forced myself to ask the question, “What do you want from Mags?”

  His eyes brightened, but he seemed almost shocked at my question.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it,” he said, sounding as excited as a small child. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t seen how she was able to command the infected.”

  I remembered seeing the images of Mags getting herself bitten again and how her eyes had changed. The security systems inside Cheyenne Mountain had captured it all, and I had seen the eyes for myself, but I couldn’t say that I had seen Mags command zombies. They had followed her around like lost puppies, but that was about it.

  “How does zombies’ followin’ Mags add up to commandin’?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I didn’t see it either,” Chester said from out of nowhere. Warren turned around, shooting Chester a venomous glare. The big man had been sitting silently in his corner on the other side of the rig and hadn’t said a word, but apparently he’d been paying attention. “I’ve seen the videos, but I only saw zombies acting like a bunch of lemmings.”

  “Well, you’re both idiots if you didn’t see it,” Warren replied.

  “So,” I said feigning contemplation, “you want a zombie army?”

  “Enough of this,” Warren said in anger, “let’s get this over with. Chester, get me Agent Marsden on the phone—now!”

  My eyes widened at Warren mentioning Mars. Was he going to get him on the line?

  Warren shot me a look as he said, “Let’s see how much you are actually worth to them.”

  I blinked and swallowed hard.

  | 25

  Mags

  We made a point of not lingering too long after we had gathered our stuff. Preston had decided to leave enough of the serum for at least fifty people with detailed instructions on how to administer it—in case they changed their minds.

  Back on the roof we took our time to explain everything to Toby again before he was given his shot. The kid was so glad to have his big sister back that he would probably have let us pump acid into his veins.

  Preston had contacted Gibs, who had been waiting for us at a distance. Fortunately, we didn’t have the same trouble as we had before. There were now many fewer zombies in the parking lot on the side of the building where Preston had parked the Hummer.

  “Took you long enough,” Gibs said over the radio as we climbed down the fire escape.

  “I blame Mags,” Tom said.

  “Didn’t anyone else wanna come?” Gibs asked, as he must have noticed we had only the two extra passengers. “Or were they the … uh.”

  “The others decided to stay,” I said, removing his doubt that only two had survived.

  “Hah … didn’t see that one coming,” he said.

  “Neither did we,” Preston replied as he jumped off the ladder and into the back of the Hummer. “What happened out here?” he asked as he leaped from the back of the truck.

  “I don’t know,” Gibs said. “One moment the place was packed, and the next moment they started to make their way around the building. I figure you should hurry up before they change their minds.”

  Angie was next to jump into the back of the truck, and she helped our two new friends down. She settled them in the back, and as soon as I found my spot at the front, I hit the top of the cab. Preston and Tom were already sitting inside, and only seconds later the engine rumbled to life.

  Plenty of zombies still stood around us so that Preston had to bump and reverse a couple of times. The vehicle shook as it ran over the ones that didn’t grasp the idea of moving out of the way. Leaning against the cab, Angie and I kept an eye out until we reached Gibs.

  He had been able to follow much what had transpired over the radio, but he couldn’t have heard everything where it concerned the residents of the DC.

  “I’ll inform Maxwell that we’re on our way back. Base command will want to get briefed,” Preston said through the open window. “Then we’ll only have to explain it once.”

  That was fine by me. The day and the events had worn me out, and I wouldn’t mind returning to the base. Fortunately, the ride shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. I felt a finger poking me in the shoulder in a repeating pattern and turned to Angie.

  “Yes,” I asked at her annoying gesture, although the disgusted face she made as I looked at her was probably saying enough.

  “I suggest you take a seat with the kids,” she said.

  Feigning innocence, I said, “But I don’t wanna sit with the kids. I wanna be up here with you.” The words had barely left my mouth before I threw an arm around her and pulled her into a hug.

  “God, woman, get off me,” she said close to outraged as she pulled away from me. “You smell awful.”

  Grinning like an idiot, I moved to the back of the truck and sat down next to Toby and across from Savanna. They were now signing with their hands instead of the flashlights, and it was kind of awesome. They spoke and signed at the same time, which made it easy for me to follow the conversation and participate. Toby explained that he had forced himself at a young age to always sign as he spoke around Savanna. That way she would know whether he was saying something even if he didn’t address her.

  “That is pretty cool you did that,” I said, directing my words at Toby but facing Savanna.

  “It comes naturally to me now,” he replied. The kids kept an easy conversation going, and time flew by along with the landscape. Talking to them turned out to be less depressing than gazing at the abandoned houses, crashed cars, and roaming zombies that looked even grimmer in the daylight. Before I knew it, the gates to the first layer of fences opened for us, and we entered the base.

  Colonel Eaves had carved out an area inside the small hangar for us. It held a several bunks and even a screen to give us women some privacy. It seemed that the colonel wasn’t entirely fond of us moving around his base, but if this was what he thought he needed to do to keep the men and women under his command safe, I for one didn’t have a problem with that.

  To my relief, I wasn’t required to attend the debriefing, and I headed for the showers. My body received a thorough, but fast, scrubbing under the stream of cold water. It seemed Colonel Eaves was rationing the hot water, or maybe even the showers were temporary and rigged up just for us. It definitely looked that way. There was, however, an abundance of clothing, and I savored the moment of dressing in my new fatigues.

  Upon returning, I found the two kids asleep in adjoining bunks, their hair wet from the shower. From behind me, I heard an exaggerated sniffing sound, and I shifted to find Angie standing by my side, her nose close to my arm. She had taken a shower of her own and followed me out the makeshift shower room.

  “Better?” I asked. She pulled a face as if she wasn’t sure and then grinned. Her hair hung loose and wet around her shoulders and, for once, wasn’t braided into the Mohawk style she usually wore. It made her face look softer.

  I plopped down on my bunk and groaned. Every muscle in my body ached.

  “Next time you’ll be dodging zombies and climbing racks,” I said in low voice to not disturb the kids.

  “Hey, don’t blame me. You’re the one who wanted to go GI Zombie on me,” Angie replied as she sat down on her bunk.

  “I just wished it had worked,” I said.

  “Well, I would have been convinced by your stunt.”

  Dr. Chen needed those people as a control group and could have used them to persuade whoever needed to be persuaded to distribute the serum. As soon as that happened, Angie and I could go home, or more exactly, I would have been able to see Ash and Mars again. A thought started to play on repeat inside my brain, and I sat up, suddenly feeling anxious.

  “What if they don’t let us go? What if they’re going to send us out again to find another group, and then another? God knows what kind of people we’ll find,” I said.

  The words spilled out fast and I saw Angie’s eyes widen at my what-must-have-looked-like-frantic behavior,
but I couldn’t help it. Bob’s group had reminded me of that Father what’s-his-name’s group, and although Bob hadn’t tried to detain us or handed us over to a mad scientist called Dr. David, I could see the similarities between the groups. Where there were two, there had to be more, and I sure as hell didn’t want to meet any of them ever again.

  “You guys decent,” Preston called out from the other side of the screen. I jumped with a yelp at the sound of the sudden voice, while Angie answered, “Yeah, fully clothed here.” Her voice was still low, and fortunately I hadn’t woken up the kids. Angie pointed at them as Preston came from around the screen and nodded in acknowledgement. He nearly whispered his next words.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow morning at first light.”

  “Back to Alaska, I presume,” Angie said. My hands seemed to fold around the edge of the bunk on their own accord, and I squeezed. I felt less than thrilled to get back there.

  Preston nodded. “Yeah, I’ve talked to Marshall. She expressed their disappointment with the outcome, but Dr. Chen seemed eager to get his hands on the kids.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I said, louder than I intended to. Angie shot me a look to tone it down.

  “Sorry, wrong choice of words,” Preston said raising his hands in defense. “I mean that he wants to monitor them, maybe draw some blood. You know, same as with you.”

  Same as with you, the words bounced inside my head like a Ping-Pong ball, and I couldn’t make them stop. Maybe Preston didn’t see it that way, but how could he not? He was in the same boat as us. He had to have seen how the others treated us. It would be the same for him and for Tom and Gibs too. I was tired of being treated as a leper, and if that couldn’t be changed, I wanted to be around the people who didn’t care about me being a Mortem virus incubator. I huffed out of frustration and let myself fall onto the bunk.

  “Get some sleep. We’ll need it,” Preston said. I glanced up at him, and he caught my gaze. Compassion filled his eyes. It was something I had never witnessed in him, as if for once he had lowered his shield and gave me a glimpse of his humanity. As if it had never happened, his face hardened, but in that fraction of a second, I had seen enough. He hated the situation as much as I did, but he was a soldier, and he would do what needed to be done to make it better.

  Although I felt exhausted, sleeping during the day wasn’t my thing, and I only managed a couple of hours, but they felt like an eternity. Sleep wouldn’t come at first, and the thought of going back to Alaska made my stomach do weird things, and if I thought about it too much, it made me feel sick. I finally started to doze, but woke as I heard whispered voices. I recognized Gibs and Tom.

  I sat up and saw Angie staring at me from the other bunk. Her dark eyes bore into me as if she could read my mind. So I found it kind of weird that she asked me the question that she did.

  “You okay?” she asked. She propped herself up on an elbow and held me with that intense gaze she had.

  I shook my head. “No not really,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  “Figured as much,” she replied and narrowed her eyes. “But you’re going to be right, because I’d hate to start that orphanage all on my own.” A bit shocked at her words I glanced at the kids who looked to be fast asleep.

  “Shut up,” I said and chugged a pillow in her direction. She caught it and tossed it right back before she flopped back on her bunk in exasperation and said, “Thank God!”

  I watched her for a moment as she pretended to wipe sweat from her forehead, and I shook my head in defeat.

  “I’ve gotta pee,” I said, grabbed my clothes, and got up.

  When I got back fully dressed, Savanna and Toby had abandoned their bunks and so had Angie. I heard voices in what sounded like a heated argument. Grabbing my gear, I rushed outside as I recognized Angie’s voice.

  “This is not your call to make,” Colonel Eaves said, pointing a finger at Angie.

  “The hell it’s not,” she said, fuming. I didn’t think I had ever seen her like that. “This is my family you’re talking about.”

  Shock and fear ran through me at the thought that something might have happened to Angie’s sister or mother, and I rushed to her side.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “What’s going on is that you are leaving for Alaska right now,” Eaves said. He sounded almost as angry as Angie. He pointed a finger at Preston, who stood nearby, passively watching the exchange.

  “The hell we are,” Angie shouted at the man’s back. Eaves turned to Preston and started yapping that he should get the people under his command in line. I guessed he had forgotten that we weren’t actually military.

  “Talk to me,” I asked, placing a hand on Angie’s shoulder. Our eyes met and the look she gave me sent a chill down my spine in such a way that I even regretted asking the question. Angie wasn’t one to beat around the bush, and she wouldn’t start now.

  “It’s Ash,” she said. It took a moment for the words to sink in while my vision did some zoom-and-fade-to-blurry thing. I blinked to regain focus.

  “But,” I said, searching for words and shaking my head at the same time, “Ash is in California, with Mars’s parents—”

  “They’re dead,” she said, and reading the shock on my face she quickly added, “His parents, Joseph and Shelley, they turned.”

  Along with my vision going out of whack, I felt my legs go weak.

  “But how …” I said as my voice wavered. “Where’s Ash?” I had so many questions, and I wanted to ask them all at the same time, but somehow my brain muddled them together, and I couldn’t even get one out.

  “Warren,” Angie said. I closed my eyes and steeled myself.

  “Does he have her?” I asked. My voice had become so small that it was barely audible, but the grim expression on Angie’s face told me she’d heard me, and with it, she had simultaneously given me an answer.

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  | 26

  Ash

  It probably wasn’t, but it seemed hours after I heard Warren talk to Mars, although I had dozed off for a while. It had taken Warren some time to get hold of him, but the eventual goal was to talk to Mags, and apparently she couldn’t be reached. I had wanted to ask Mars if Rowdy was okay and even Luke, but Warren wouldn’t let me talk to him, and he also didn’t ask himself. It left me feeling like a fool, the way I had pleaded with him, but he had been relentless.

  From what I had picked up, he hadn’t said anything to Mars about what he wanted from Mags, just that he wanted to talk to her before any deal for my return could be made. Mars promised to make it happen. I had caught that much. There also might have been some cursing, because Warren removed the headset twice, waiting for a second before placing it on his head again. The visual made me smile, but not enough to distract me from the problem at hand. A problem of which I had no idea how to handle.

  Warren wanted to use me as bait. That much was clear, and there wasn’t much I could do about that. Warren had me, and that meant Mags was coming to get me, right? A smidgen of doubt triggered somewhere in the furthest regions of my mind, wondering if she’d come. But I crushed that doubt immediately after it rose, because in my heart I knew she’d come. Mags had come through for me in the past, and I knew she would again, except this time I didn’t want her to. I couldn’t let her risk her own life to save mine. Besides, if she came, I wouldn’t be surprised if both our lives would be forfeited. Warren didn’t seem the type of man who would leave loose threads hanging. If it were true what he had said and cover-ups were being planned, then that wouldn’t leave much room for us.

  All this was enough to renew the headache that had never left. I leaned forward and stretched my back and neck. Those hours that had seemed to have passed before had definitely passed by now, and I didn’t think I’d be able to sit like this for much longer.

  I glanced at Chester, who had raised his feet up on a table and seemed fast asleep. Warren was sitting like a statue, staring in
to his microscope. My own eyes threatened to close, and I fought to keep them open. Every so often my head would loll forward, and I would jolt up feeling a slight rejuvenation that would last only moments.

  My eyes fell closed again but shot open at the sound of beeping. At the desk, Warren sat up straight and moved his neck from left to right until bones cracked. The sound sent a shiver down my spine. He let the beeping continue, and I was about to call him out on it when he picked up the headset.

  “Ms. Vissers,” he said, sounding delighted. He removed the headset and closed his eyes. A moment later, he placed them back, sporting a grimace, and I figured Mags hadn’t been done yet. I could only imagine the colorful words Mags was throwing at his head. “Yes, very well, perhaps I should put you on speaker so our main subject of interest can follow the conversation.”

  Warren flipped a switch and unplugged the headset from the device. The action created a nasty feedback sound that tortured my ears. Then there was silence.

  “Ms. Vissers,” Warren said again, “can you hear me?” I could hear her breathing over the line and knew she was there. I wanted to shout out to her, to tell her I was here and to please come get me, but I managed to keep my mouth shut. I needed to figure out a way to play this smart, because forasmuch as I wanted to get out of here, I couldn’t let that happen at the expense of my friends—especially not Mags.

  “I’m here,” she said. Her voice was low but steady.

  “Excellent,” Warren said. “I’ll come to business straight away, because you won’t have much time, Ms. Vissers. If you wish to see your small friend again, I’ll be in Salinas, California, in two days’ time, and I’d like to meet you there—alone.” A derisive chuckle sounded from the other end of the line.