The Hungry (Book 6): The Rule of Three (The Sheriff Penny Miller Zombie Series)

by Booth, Steven W.

  “How far is American Falls from here?”

  “American Falls? That’s maybe two or three hours away, Sheriff. What’s there?”

  Miller sat back. “I’ve been told they’re going to attack the water supply. The plan is to dump zombie virus into the Snake River. It’ll affect a hundred million people.”

  Judy had been eavesdropping and had leaned too far back into the doorway. Christa spotted her. “Judy, did you know about that?”

  Judy frowned and glared at Miller. “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

  “Sheriff,” Christa said, “the Snake River supplies water to Idaho, sure, but once south of American Falls, it only supplies Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and then a few parts of Oregon and California. With the exception of central and northern Idaho—which gets its water from Hell’s Canyon—all of our intelligence and your earlier reporting indicates that those areas have already been inflected. They are all compromised.”

  “But…”

  “So my question is,” Christa said, “who exactly are they planning to poison?”

  Miller exchanged a fevered glance with Sheppard. She couldn’t believe she’d so fully bought into Crespi’s bullshit. “Why, that lying little sonofabitch.”

  “Who?”

  “Crespi.” Miller shook her head. What a damned fool she’d been. He’d had only one reason to let her go, and that was to get her to send their armed enemies on a wild goose chase. If they’d listened to her, they’d be charging off in the wrong direction. And his simple little plan had almost worked. “It was a man named Crespi who let us go, he told me that story.”

  Sheppard shifted on the sofa and springs complained. “Miguel Crespi? He’s one of the members of the Enhanced Bioweapons Select Committee. I’m surprised he told you anything, much less set you free.”

  “I see now that it was just a diversion. And he sold it well. Crespi expected me to believe him, and I did believe him until just now. He gambled no one would contradict the story until it was too late. Sorry, I screwed up.”

  “So, we don’t know anything, do we?” asked Judy, scornfully. “All those people dead and it was all for nothing.”

  Miller met her eyes. There was no longer a look of vindictiveness. Miller didn’t know if that meant they were even, or if Judy was just going to go off the deep end again. Sociopaths could be both charming and manipulative at will, so the calm was likely an act. Miller had her pegged now. She didn’t care to be taken in again. But for the moment, her team consisted of the four of them, and they would all just have to work together. Miller wondered if Christa had taken Judy’s measure as well. She decided it was likely she had. Christa seemed damned cool under pressure.

  Sheppard broke the silence. “Penny?”

  “Yes, Karl?”

  “What are we going to do about getting Scratch and the others?”

  Miller considered. “You know something? I haven’t the slightest fucking clue, but let’s work on that.” She looked at each of them in turn. Then she settled on Christa. “When are we expecting McDivitt’s friends?”

  Christa looked at the floor. “That would be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

  “Can we call them and get them here any sooner?”

  “We can try, though we may be under surveillance ourselves for all we know. Most of them will be off the grid just before the mission, so as to drop any electronic trails they may have been leaving. We are also assuming the Triad will be ready for an attack and may even have some of the details of our planning. One of our people may have been captured and compromised. We couldn’t account for them all, we had to run for our lives.”

  Judy spoke up. “What about the ones who were going after that truck of yours, Sheriff?”

  Miller and Sheppard looked at each other. A tiny smile crept over Sheppard’s face. He turned to Judy. “You mean the Land Shark?”

  “I’d completely forgotten about that.” Miller said. “Good thinking. That is one hell of a war machine. If we could get their sorry asses here earlier, we’d have a hell of a lot more to work with.”

  “The Land Shark is less than an hour away,” Sheppard said. “If they were the right people, they could get it running and have it here in maybe three or four hours.”

  Miller nodded. “He means talented mechanics. Christa, can we send some?”

  Christa stood. “I’ll find out.” She went into the kitchen.

  Sheppard turned to both of the women. He ignored Judy’s shenanigans and played it straight. “I’m so glad you both made it out of there alive. From what Judy just told us it must have been a harrowing experience.”

  “It wasn’t fun, I’ll tell you that.” Miller didn’t want to show emotion. She looked at the floor. It was clean, with an Afghan rug in the middle of the hardwood. There was a cat tree in the corner, but no sign of a cat. The walls were decorated simply and tastefully. The house looked lived in. Miller almost asked who owned it, but if it turned out that it was Bean or Piper, Judy might go off on another one of her tirades.

  “Are you okay, Penny?”

  Miller looked at Sheppard. “It’s all so… normal.”

  Sheppard waited patiently for her to continue, but when she said no more, he said, “Like the world was before this all came down. The way we all still wish it was. I understand completely.”

  Miller nodded and looked down again. Sheppard always seemed to understand. Christa returned from the kitchen with a tight smile on her face. “I just spoke to Neil. Good news. The Land Shark is running and already on the way here. Captain, what the hell is that thing, anyway? Neil sounds excited. He says it’s some kind of super-truck. Where did it come from?”

  Sheppard spoke over his shoulder. “We have no idea, Christa. We found it out there in someone’s garage.”

  “Good news,” Miller said. “Wait, who’s Neil?”

  “Neil Cernan. He’s ex-Marine, and one hell of a mechanic to boot. You’ll like him. He’s bringing along a woman named Sally Eisle.”

  Judy’s eyes lit up. “Sally’s coming?” Miller watched as she visibly relaxed. Whoever the hell Sally Eisle was, she must have a hell of a reputation. Just the thought of her presence seemed to put Judy at ease. If they all survived this mess, Miller thought, Judy would keep some shrink busy for years.

  “How long before they arrive?”

  “They said thirty minutes or less, Sheriff. Presuming they don’t get pulled over by the State Police, of course. According to them your truck looks like something Mad Max would drive.”

  Miller smiled. “Yes, that’s the one, and it may be just what we need.” She turned to Sheppard. “Let’s get busy. A half hour isn’t a lot of time.”

  Sheppard didn’t get the gist of her statement. “Isn’t a lot of time for what? I thought we’d just decided Crespi’s mission was probably bogus.”

  Miller smiled at Sheppard, Judy, and Christa in turn. She felt her features harden into a stern resolve. “We are going to ignore what Crespi told us, Karl. We are going back to the base to rescue our people.”

  Chapter Twenty

  2 hours, 20 minutes to Stage Three (9:40pm)

  Dr. Charlotte Williams stalked down the corridor, searching for Miguel Crespi. The little son of a bitch, once her trusted associate, had used his position to betray her. He’d tricked her into giving away her most precious secret. If she had killed him and been wrong about his loyalties, Cecil would have never have understood. The others would not have forgiven. Her ticket to paradise would have been cancelled. So she’d opened up to Crespi instead, telling him everything. Killing Crespi now wouldn’t solve all her problems, but it would go a long way toward getting back in Cecil’s good graces, which at that moment was the only thing worth doing other than making good on her escape.

  But, of course, with all her trusted soldiers and mercenaries dispatched on other missions, Williams had no choice but track Crespi down and kill him herself.

  Williams searched the building, her shoes clacking on the poli
shed tile, an unfamiliar gun held low at her side. It was an ivory-handled revolver that felt heavy and cumbersome in her hand. She knew how to shoot of course, but pulling the trigger had always been someone else’s responsibility. That was the way it was supposed to work, wasn’t it? After all, she was Chairwoman of the Enhanced Bioweapons Select Committee. She gave the orders, but someone else carried them out. Many people had died at her command, but always from a safe distance. In this case there was no one else around to do the dirty deed.

  A recorded voice said something garbled over the intercom. Someone gunned the engine of a vehicle in the distance. An elevator pinged open and an unfamiliar young woman wearing thick glasses scurried down the corridor towards Williams, studiously avoiding her eyes. She was probably a secretary or some other functionary. As the stranger hurried past, she spotted the weapon and her chin trembled. For a brief moment, Williams wondered what the woman thought of her, a top executive strolling through the halls with a loaded gun, clearly bent on a course of action that could not be stopped by the likes of an administrative assistant. Of course within in a few hours the woman, along with millions of others, would be as good as dead. It didn’t matter what she thought about anything.

  Williams paused in a doorway. She pressed the number for Crespi’s mobile phone and watched as the encoded carrier connected the call. She did not raise her phone to listen for an answer. She didn’t actually want to talk to Crespi, she just wanted to see if she’d be able to hear his phone ringing. Williams was certain that Crespi was hiding somewhere along this very section of corridor, her tracking system had assured her of that, she just hadn’t yet been able to pinpoint his precise location. Making his phone ring seemed a logical solution to that problem.

  Williams smiled when she heard the familiar departmental ring tone. Crespi was only a few yards away. The tone seemed to come from the right side of the corridor, two doors down. The corridor had originally been used for tertiary offices or temporary storage, but as of late walls had been moved and it had been designated for special experimentation. Williams wondered why a man like Crespi had come down here in the first place. He seemed competent, but seldom had the taste for action. He also never seemed to enjoy interacting with the test subjects, alive or dead. But then the phone wouldn’t lie. She moved forward, weapon at the ready. There was no doubt that Crespi was close. The phone rang twice more and then stopped.

  Williams hesitated. Perhaps he was already a zombie? Williams entertained that idea for a brief moment. She pictured Crespi dead and drooling gore, shambling in circles with blood on his tailored suit, the cell phone ringing and vibrating endlessly in his jacket pocket. No, she couldn’t possibly be that lucky. Crespi was alive, slippery as hell like always, and doubtless down here for other, far more sinister reasons.

  Her phone rang. She clicked it on and heard Crespi’s voice.

  “Charlotte?” She slowly lifted the device to her ear.

  “Miguel? Where are you?” Still playing dumb, Williams raised the pistol and aimed it at the center of the next door, right where she knew she would find Crespi waiting. “Stage Three is in place. It is time to evacuate. Why aren’t you where you’re supposed to be?”

  “I got caught up with something,” Crespi said smoothly. Williams knew he was lying. Everything he had said lately was a lie, and now this too. “I’ll be there directly, Charlotte.”

  “Hurry, Miguel.” Williams disconnected the line. She raised the gun, pulled the hammer back, kept her aim steady, and waited for him to open the door. Nothing happened for a time, and then a handle jiggled.

  A door opened abruptly, but it was not the one she had been expecting. Startled, Williams brought her weapon to bear. A figure that emerged from the entrance just beyond the one she’d first targeted. She almost fired but stopped just in time. It was not Miguel Crespi. A security specialist appeared, the one Williams had seen in her office earlier that day. He was Crespi’s guard, the one who had taken Raymond to his doom. The man looked startled and his hand drifted towards his side arm.

  “I wouldn’t,” Williams warned. Apparently the security specialist was no fool. He held his hands away from his body and remained perfectly still.

  Williams took two steps towards the man. She gestured for him to move away from the entrance, but instead of doing as ordered, he dove back toward the open door. Williams squeezed the trigger, hitting him squarely in the vest, knocking him to the floor.

  “Crespi, run!” The guard shouted, hands now groping for his weapon. Williams aimed and shot him again, but this time squarely in the face. Brains and bone splattered the wall. Williams barely noticed. She was angry now, especially because he had made her waste two shots. He had also just given away her position. The big revolver had four more rounds. Williams only needed one of them for Crespi, and then she’d be free to go back to transforming the world into a sparsely populated paradise.

  “Charlotte?” Crespi’s voice came from behind the door propped open by the body of the security specialist she had just killed.

  “Miguel, why don’t you come on out so we can get this over with?” Crouching low, Williams approached the dead specialist. She pulled his pistol out of its holster and tucked it into the belt of her pants suit, thinking it might come in handy. No sense giving Crespi a false sense of hope. “You’re wasting my precious time.”

  “I don’t understand, Charlotte. What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? You lied to me. You said you were working with Cecil. You said you would be forced to file a negative report on my activities if I didn’t fill you in. But we both know now that was bullshit, don’t we, Miguel?”

  Crespi hesitated, as if pondering his situation or perhaps selecting his next words very carefully.

  “Listen, you don’t have to kill me.”

  “No, of course I don’t,” Williams said. “Now that Raymond is gone, there’s no reason we can’t be friends again.” She put her head in the doorway. The room was mostly dark, but she could just see Crespi moving around in the shadows at the back near the closed curtains. “But all this running around and hiding has got to stop. Come over here.”

  Obediently, Crespi moved forward, but of course it wasn’t Crespi. He’d just wanted her to think that. Williams gagged and wrinkled her nose. Whatever Crespi sent to greet her had a serious limp, and smelled like a crowded mortuary after a power failure. It grunted unhh hunhh hunhhh…

  “Very funny, Miguel.” Williams raised the revolver and aimed at the thing’s head. She squeezed the trigger, the gun erupted, white light flared, and the zombie went down. “Are you coming out or not?”

  “Not,” Crespi called, his voice now coming from the corner behind her. Williams gasped and spun on one foot like a ballet dancer. “At least, I’m not coming out until you drop the gun.”

  Williams searched the shadows in that part of the room. She checked the wall for a switch plate, but felt nothing. Meanwhile, another zombie ambled toward her. Heart pounding, Williams raised the revolver and fired again. Her aim was true. The thing crumbled to the floor. How many shots had she fired? Three, right? Suddenly Williams wasn’t absolutely sure.

  “Miguel, let me explain this to you. Your betrayal may have cost me everything I hold dear, everything I worked for. This is your fault. But I don’t have to kill you. In fact, I have a deal to offer.”

  There was some movement to her right, and Williams again turned around. This time, there were four of the creatures, in some kind of loose formation, and now she had a real problem. The revolver had perhaps three more shots, if memory served, and Miguel probably knew that as well. Her quick clean up job had just turned into an impasse.

  “Don’t you want to hear my deal, Miguel?”

  “Not particularly.” The voice came from somewhere to the left. Williams turned again.

  Crespi said, “I may be worth a lot to you dead, but you’re still worth more to me alive. Put down your weapon, Charlotte, and I’ll make sure you’re safe.” Two more zombie
s approached from that same angle. How was he controlling them? Or was he just protected in some way? What exactly was going on?

  Williams realized that she had made a rookie mistake coming after Crespi, and she cursed herself for it. She turned toward the door. More zombies approached from that angle. She was cut off. She was trapped.

  “You always were a smartass, Miguel,” Williams said. She raised her revolver and unloaded it at the closest three zombies. Two went down, but with the third she missed the critical brain shot. Williams threw down the revolver and pulled the dead guard’s semi-automatic from her belt. Its greater weight was foreign and comforting at the same time. Williams fired again.

  The falling zombies opened a path to the far wall. Williams moved away rapidly, her mouth dry. The zombies grunted and moaned. More appeared, and she could hear their hungry uhh-huuuhhhh-hunnnhh chant as they followed. She fired and fired. This had to end. Williams had no intention of dying at the hands of Miguel Crespi and the undead. She made her way across the room to the far wall. The zombies approached as she tapped along the wall at waist-level.

  “What are you doing, Charlotte?”

  “You know something, Miguel? I used to admire you.”

  “Charlotte?” He knew she was up to something. He was worried.

  As she answered, Williams continued to tap the wall. “I thought you could be a part of a larger world I was helping to create. And if you had just played an honest game, we could be on the same side at the end of this fight. But you chose the wrong cause.”

  Unhh hunhh hunhh… The zombies were getting closer.

  And then Williams found it, the soft and hollow spot that she was looking for. She chuckled. “You thought you could trap me, put me at your mercy, didn’t you? You forgot I personally approved all the construction plans and security system electronics.”

  Crespi did not respond.

  Williams turned the pistol around, and struck the wall with the butt of the weapon. The plaster crumbled. “Let me tell you something, Miguel. I am not that easy to kill.”