“Kid, we can’t trust this. He could snap at any second. Now let’s get him back under lock and key and just get---”
The monitor on Tom’s ankle began to buzz, and Tom forgot any pain or blindness recently tossed his way. He simply stood and moved past Neal and me as if we were just pieces of furniture, and he started undoing the door. Neal and I stared at each other in disbelief.
“Can it be this easy?” Neal whispered. “Time’s up, and we’re out?”
I shrugged at him, not knowing what to believe, but when Tom finally got the door open and batted away the boards, we both forgot our shock and started to follow. Neal handed me the muzzle, and we followed Tom into the night that was just starting to taste like morning. Whatever kind of GPS Ford had attached to Tom now held all of his attention, and he retraced a path that struck me as familiar. This was the way Lana and I had come when we left the tent, and whether Tom was totally under Ford’s control or on the verge of playing her for our benefit, I felt that we were going to find the others.
But a question remained. Were we going to make it to them in time?
Neal and I held back a few paces. Prof in particular kept his weapon poised. I knew that he would strike a blow if he so much as detected Tom ignoring the remote control wired to his lower leg and remembering dinner and dessert just a few steps back.
I resolved to have more faith in my friend.
A sudden rush of zombies from our left and our right made faith and friendship seem inconsequential, and like Neal, I raised my weapon and got ready to take what felt like the billionth in a long line of last stands since the zombies first came to campus. Two of them got so close that I could feel a strand of mucous bounce against my wrist, and when it revealed its set of dirty browns, I got ready to hit. Suddenly my would-be assailant sniffed the air and took a step back. The unexpected movement caused the others in his band to follow suit. I glanced at Tom and tried to comprehend his expression in the wake of my being spared, but I couldn’t get a solid read.
Neal was a different story.
He flailed about furiously as the zombies started to engulf him. I wished I’d taken the chance to hug him tight before we set out after Tom, but now there was no chance of covering him with the perfume of the dead. If Neal had any chance of joining me and finding the others, he had to rely on one word.
Sorry.
“Prof!” I screamed as the zombies lugged him towards one of the campus’ bare trees. He was hung on a branch like a winter coat but one with the fairy-tale ability to kick and sweat and curse.
“Prof! Apologize!”
“What?”
“Apologize!”
“For what?”
A small zombie, who was either a child or a little person in its former life, grabbed hold of Neal’s belt and started to swing back and forth as if the man were a rope swing. The Tiny Killer ripped open Neal’s shirt, and I saw it all too eager to take a bite out of his chest.
“For everything. Anything.”
Neal was too scared not to listen to me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry the sky is blue. Sorry the earth is round. Sorry you’re… this.”
It was the last one that did it, and while Neal had no hand in this particular monster’s moment of turning, it accepted the pity and dropped to the ground with a light thud. As it scurried away from Neal, followed by a pack of undead friends, I raced back to the professor and lowered him off the tree branch. I searched his skin.
There were no bite marks, but the Tiny Killer had swept its yellow nails across Neal’s chest, and there was blood. Neal retrieved his weapons, and we followed the departing zombie horde.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Right as rain. How did you figure this out?”
“The woman. Ford. She pointed us out to Tom. She told us what we did.”
“And it made him angrier.”
“Right.”
“So I said I was sorry. And I am. I’m sorry this happened to all of them. Sorry they were used this way. And there is no way they’re going to use Lana and Morgan.”
Neal nodded his approval of my conviction, and before we knew it. We were walking with the zombies. I had the feeling that I had transferred to another school in the Bizarro universe, but that wasn’t the strangest thing. What was really weird was that I suddenly felt like I was one of them as we drew nearer to the place where Lana and I had been held, the place where I had to figure Lana and Morgan were now. I saw the tent poking below the space in the sky getting softer at the promise of the sun, but there was still enough cover of night for us to move though the shadows. It struck me that the zombies were making like stealth drones, and I tried to remember a time when they had moved so quietly. There was none to recall, so I just kept up with the others and whispered out of the corner of my mouth.
“Prof?”
“Talk fast, Kid.”
“As soon as we see them---”
“Who?”
“Like the guards I guess.”
“Okay.”
“Point them out to Tom and the others. Can you make with the Shakespeare speak?”
I turned my head to see Neal dumbfounded by the request.
“What?”
I searched my memory for every English class I’d ever slept through. There was always someone, usually one of the drama geeks or someone who just liked to hear himself talk, spouting off about a crime that had to be avenged in blood. I never totally got what it was supposed to mean. Maybe because the plays were about dead people or people who were never even real. But it wasn’t like I didn’t get the need for retribution. It was just the noise of too much poetry and nothing like the way people really talked that bored me to the point where my backpack as a pillow seemed the better alternative. But now I needed a grand stand to rally our troops to tear the guards apart. And if either of us was going to get it done, I figured that the guy who actually taught the stuff had to step up to the mat.
“You gotta tell them that it’s their fault. You gotta give them the real target.”
Neal pressed his shield closer to his chest. It wouldn’t protect him if we got this wrong.
“Just make them believe that they have to like lay siege or whatever.”
He grabbed my arm and kept me from moving as the zombies continued past us. It was like everyone was following Tom. He knew the score, but how could he make them understand when he could only speak my name like he was still muzzled?
“Sam---”
“It’s the only way. Remember. They’re supposed to be soldiers. But… but that Ford. She got something wrong. They’ll fight for their lived. And I don’t think she’s expecting that. Not here.”
I started to place the iron muzzle over his head. Neal tried to bat me away, and the sounds of his struggle twisted the Tiny Killer around. I could see it regard me with contempt as Neal held up his hand.
“I’m… we’re sorry.”
For the moment it was enough to stop it from ambushing me, and the Tiny Killer went back to parading with the others. I got closer to Neal and knew I had to make him understand in a split second’s worth of a whisper.
“Make like you’re someone else. Like an escaped convict. They saw your face. They can’t know we escaped. Throw them off their game. Get the zombies going after the real bad guys.”
Neal took the muzzle from my hands and stroked the steel.
“And Morgan?” he murmured.
I started to place the cage around his face as I quickly relayed the rest of the plan.
“I’ll get them. We’ll meet back at the house.”
“House?”
“Where Gabby… where Gabby died. Okay?”
I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t a hundred percent on board with the scheme, but smart as he was, he couldn’t come up with anything else as quick. So Neal let me bind his face. He shook my shoulders and nodded as he raced past the others.
Then I saw Ford’s guards. And their guns.
Neal kept running, and he got i
nto character by taking the Tiny Killer’s hand as he neared a rotting stump. I watched him ascend the spot with a burst of confidence, and he beat his shield against his protected head. As I had hoped, the guards were put off by what they took for the sight of one of their prisoners out of his chains, and they weren’t so stupid as to not get that he meant business when he turned his head, masked, to the true zombies. Neal pointed his crude sword at the other soldiers in this sudden war.
“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Now everyone was totally confused. I got that I didn’t need Neal to play Hamlet or whatever he was doing. I just needed him to point the finger in the right direction.
“Prof!”
Neal turned his metal-clad face back to my waving arms. He raised his hands in what I took for a state of confusion, and I knew that I had to correct my mistake.
“Just tell them where the blame should go!”
Neal hung his head. He probably felt like a fool for quoting what I guessed was a classic play when we needed to focus on now. But he got my drift as he lifted the Tiny Killer to his side and whispered something into its ear. I didn’t hear the words, but I saw the little zombie’s face shift into a look that meant it was time to lay waste, and the Tiny Killer charged towards the guards as Neal sank back into the soil.
Led by Tom, the zombies rushed the guards. Bullets struck some, and others fell. But more of them than I had hoped revived and were able to lay into the guards. Tom grabbed a rifle and twisted it into knots like it was just a rubber band, and then he brought the shiny tangle down on a guard’s head before using it on another and another and going through the motion again and again.
Dude was winning the day, and I started towards the tent.
As I ran, more guards trickled past me. Whether they recognized me from the basement or not became moot as they were all consumed with rescuing their comrades from a zombie fate. I quickly looked over my shoulder to see Neal crawling on his belly across the soil. He was trying to follow me when a bullet struck his shoulder, and I saw him go limp.
“Prof!”
Neal wasn’t moving. No. I’d killed him, too, and I started to go back to where he fell when a gust of wind brought me back to his headspace.
He’d want me to save Morgan.
I kept running, and when I found the tent, I tore the flap open.
What I saw was awful.
Lana was shackled to a post, and she struggled and screamed through her muzzle.
Her fate was preferable to what was happening to Morgan.
She was strapped to a table, also muzzled, and Ford was crouching over her with what looked like a turkey baster attached to a whirring motor. Morgan was stripped to the waist, and I saw a syringe in Ford’s hand as she drove the point of the baster deeper inside the victim. Morgan screamed through the violation. I had to save her, but I needed help.
I slipped to Lana’s side. She flinched and moaned at my touch, and I grabbed her neck. My voice found its way to her ear.
“It’s me, Lana. Stay with me.”
Lana relaxed as I remembered the screwdriver and started to undo her bindings. Morgan’s screams were almost too much to bear as I tried to remove the cage around Lana’s head. Putting the same thing on Neal had been way easier, so I pressed my piece from the stool into Lana’s hand and tucked her arm behind her back.
“Move when I say now.”
She nodded through the muzzle and stood like a statue. I patted her shoulder and got ready to do my part.
“Ford!”
The red-headed interrogator spun around, and I saw the surprise on her face when she discovered that it was me barking her name. Her jaw moved, but no sound came out as I stepped towards her, and I used her confusion to my advantage and swatted the violator from her hand. I could hear Morgan crying through her muzzle, and I thought of Neal bleeding, dying, probably already dead just feet away.
I would get this right.
“Game’s over, psycho!”
I grabbed Ford’s slim shoulders and pounded her into the ground. She tried to push me away, and it surprised us both that I was strong enough to hold her down. I bashed her body into the dirt, and it was like she was channeling what I’d done to Tom when the point of her right heel pierced my temple and sent me back to Lana’s feet. Ford lay motionless for a few seconds, but she got back to where she could stand and lifted her skirt. Her shapely legs were clad in nylon, and she plucked a pistol from her garter belt. She would wear that to the massacre she’d orchestrated.
“Sam, Sam, Sam.”
She aimed the gun at my head.
“I didn’t want to have to be the one to do this. I rather liked the idea of picking you up and studying you further once your friend did his thing. But things are what they are.”
Ford’s finger curled around the trigger, and I mirrored her movement with Lana’s ankle.
“Now!”
Lana charged forward and drove the stake into Ford’s chest. Her gun went off, but the bullet only hit the tent flap. Lana pulled the wood from Ford’s body, and I blinked at the sight of blood, red blood, as she drove it repeatedly into her chest. With the strength she had left, Ford reached up and plunged the needle into Lana’s throat. Lana collapsed to the ground, and I rushed to her side.
“Lana? Lana!”
She moaned through her muzzle, and I tried again to get it off. There was no way to undo the latch, and I could do nothing but hold her close to my chest as she wheezed thought the steel.
“Lana?”
And then I saw her eyes. The space was small, but it was still her even bound. I could feel her slipping away, and I started to cry. I’d take her as a zombie. I’d take her any way that meant steely tones.
“I’m… glad… you found me, Sam.
“Lana, come on. Stay with me.”
“You found me.”
I pressed her fading body closer to mine.
“No. No I never should have found you. I’ve put you in all this danger. And now… Lana, can you hang on?”
Her breath rattled in the confines of the muzzle. My mind flashed back to our first meeting. I was trying to be her hero, and all I’d done was send her in circles that resulted in what would have happened had I never been dumb enough to see her.
She was dying.
Lana took my hand just before her body started to convulse.
“Go, Sam. Now.”
No. No I couldn’t just leave her. I couldn’t take the chance that she would be dissected and somehow preserved to keep whatever this was going until she wished that I had been such a coward to leave her to die. Lana gave my hand one more squeeze, and I could feel her smile.
“Now!”
Before I could protest, she went limp in my arms. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it, and I shook her hard in a futile effort to bring her back to life. She wasn’t moving, and so I clawed the muzzle off her head. My bruised fingers were numb in the face of further injury, but I got the thing off and saw her face. What I expected to see shattered was strangely serene. I thought that if I could imagine hard enough, she would just be sleeping. Let it be like mythical. Let me wake her up with a kiss. My lips met hers, and I found that her face was already stiffening under my mouth.
I couldn’t even save her.
I kept trying to make sense of the scene. Here was my would-be girlfriend and a government type lifeless at my knees.
“Lana, I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t move, and the sounds of shots and screams seemed like muted music from another room. I plucked the needle from her neck. Only the dead Ford really knew what it was and what it could to do me, and I wanted to join Lana in her sleep. I rolled up my sleeve and was on the verge of ending everything and---
And Morgan was still crying.
I saw her roll off the table. She pulled herself together and hugged her chest with trembling arms. Taking a deep breath, I searched for and found the syringe
’s barrier. I sealed the murder weapon and tucked in in my pocket. Then I lifted Morgan off the ground. She was still muzzled, and I had to scream to make her understand who I was. On a table of awful looking medical tools, I saw a remote. With nothing to lose, I pushed the button. Morgan’s face came into view, and when she saw Lana dead, she lost it all over again.
“Morgan! Stop!”
She was crying like crazy, and I knew that a slap would silence her into submission. But she’d been hurt enough, so I just held her and talked fast.
“We have to go. Now.”
I scanned the tent for something to cover her. Neal’s jacket was nowhere to be found, and I wound a sheet around her quivering chest as I led her out of the tent and into the firefight. I looked back at Lana, dead, and resolved to try to find a way to go on without her by my side.
Zombie teeth slashed into the guards’ uniforms and guns kept blazing. I saw the Tiny Killer gnawing at a discarded leg, and it winked at me with a smile. I could feel Morgan sobbing into my shoulder.
“Neal?”
“He’s coming,” I lied.
Morgan wanted him, and I couldn’t bear to tell her that he was among the dead. I picked her up and carried her, bad leg and all, to the house. No one would meet us there. But I had a promise to keep.
I clung to Morgan’s bedraggled body, forgot that she was a zombie, and moved through the hail of bullets and blood until the fight was drowned out by the distance. I didn’t know what I would do once I reached the destination point because I shouldn’t be alive.
I should be dead.
The house was not as we had left it. It had been ransacked in search of the clues that led Ford’s people to Clay and us and back again. I laid Morgan on the couch and found a blanket. I placed it over her shaking body. I gave her some water and tried to think of what to do next when the door started to open. I moved on my hands and knees and had the syringe ready to act until I had Morgan under my arms as a man in a mask entered the room. Morgan wailed at the sight, but I knew that someone had completed the plan and was now reporting to headquarters on my orders.
“Kid?”
He was bleeding badly from his shoulder, and I tore off a piece of the sheet surrounding Morgan. I wrapped the linen around his upper arm and guided him to Morgan’s terrified side. She thrashed as he neared, but Neal held her face and shushed her through his metal head.
Zombie University (The Complete Series): How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse Page 15