The Romero Strain (Book 2): The Dead, The Damned & The Darkness

by Ts Alan

  “Can you still contact your base?” he asked Kermit.

  Kermit was curious to J.D.’ s odd question. “Yes. Why?”

  “You remember what I told you my daddy always said? Well, I need one,” he said, and then explained his stipulation.

  ***

  It wasn’t long before Doctor France came to his office demanding to know why his research equipment or personal affects had not been moved to the staging area.

  “It’s simple…” J.D. explained. “You’re not going.”

  Outraged the doctor yelled, “What do you mean I am not going?! Of course, I am going. I did not work this hard at making sure you kept me alive just to be left behind.”

  “You’re only alive because you served a purpose. After tonight that purpose will no longer exist,” J.D. enlightened him.

  “If it was not for me you would still be that pathetic, broken man who was hiding in his room, instead of the hunter/killer you have become.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” J.D. asked, curious about the doctor’s odd comment.

  “Where do you think your courage and your ferocity comes from? From channeling your inner Bruce Lee?” the doctor sarcastically asked. “From your evolving transmute side? No! It came from me! I gave you what you needed to keep this facility safe, the driving desire to punish those who would take it from us.”

  J.D. demanded clarification “Speak plainly,” he snapped.

  “You wanted to save the world but your martial arts honor and religious philosophies were getting in the way of doing what was necessary—to kill our enemies without restraint or remorse. I freed you from your moral compass and reticence by activating that repressed part of your transmute brain.”

  “You did what?”

  “Yes, Mr. Nichols, I unleashed the monster you feared you were becoming. The truth is your headaches are simply a combination of posttraumatic stress, fatigue and insomnia, not a symptom of further mutation.”

  J.D. was stunned at the admission. The doctor had convinced him his health was deteriorating from further mutation. He screamed, “Then what the fuck was all that medication for?”

  The doctor replied, “A pharmaceutical catalyst for stimulating the frontal and temporal lobes to keep you alert and drive your aggression and rage.”

  “You sick fucking bastard, you convinced me I was on the verge of no longer being human.”

  “No. Mr. Nichols, you convinced yourself of that! I was merely extorting what you wanted to believe. It gave you justification for the atrocities you needed to commit to keep us all alive.”

  J.D.’s rage exploded. He lifted his desk and over turned it.

  “That’s right, let it out,” the doctor told him, “but not on me, on that sick son-of-a-bitch who preys upon the weak. The one who rapes, tortures and murders innocent children. Children like your own daughter.”

  The shouting between the doctor and J.D. had not gone unnoticed by others in the armory. Ryan, Kermit, Paul and David rushed into the office, weapons drawn, just as France said, “Be the killer I made you, don’t give Stone the chance to find our new home.”

  “Arrest him,” J.D. ordered his men.

  Without hesitation Ryan and Paul seized Richard France.

  “No, no,” the doctor protested loudly, struggling to get free. “You should be thanking me. I have given you the will and means to defeat our enemy, and this is how you repay me?”

  “‘I am in no mood to be deceived any longer by the crafty devil and false character whose greatest pleasure is to take advantage of everyone,’” J.D. warned him.

  “Camille Claudel?” David whispered, recognizing the quote from his days at university.

  J.D. reached into a leg pocket and retrieved several bottles of pills and held them up, announcing, “My sanity was purposely turned to madness and put to use. I am not a monster by my own hand but one created by a man who had his own agenda,” he informed everyone, pouring the pills onto the floor.

  “Fool!” France shouted, his countenance expressing the utmost extent of condescension. “Reject what I have made you and risk defeat.”

  “You may be my creator,” J.D. replied sharply, “but you are not my master. Put him in basement lockup,” he instructed. “I’ll deal with him later.”

  The doctor warned, “Our enemy is merciless; we cannot afford pity. Kill or be killed,” he warned, as Ryan and Paul forcefully escorted him from the office.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, that will be all,” J.D. informed David and Kermit as he put his attention to righting the overturned desk and picking up the scattered papers.

  “Be all?” Kermit asked. “I think there is much to talk about.”

  “I am extraordinarily busy, gentlemen,” he replied pointedly ignoring him and David, as he sat and began to sort through the disheveled paperwork.

  “This changes the plan,” Kermit informed him.

  “No, it does not.”

  Kermit asked, “Why not?”

  “Can the revelation of knowing I am not a monster make up for the monstrous things I have done?”

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” David admonished him. “You have hurt others, gone to extremes; so what? You need to own that shit. If it weren’t for you, I’d bet most of your survivor group would never have made it. Like myself. And if they can’t accept what you’ve done to protect them, and be grateful for it then fuck ’em! You don’t need them, because they’re not the kind that’ll have your back.”

  “You can’t forget or forgive what’s been done,” J.D. told David.

  “You’ve taken so many lives in this battle, now you are filled with regret and guilt that you avoid to think that your life has meaning even to others,” Kermit expressed.

  “My life?” J.D. asked. He sprang up from his chair, angrily. “It is my duty to stop him before more people suffer—even if it means I must sacrifice my life,” he educated Kermit.

  “Your life is not for you alone,” Kermit voiced. “If you self-sacrifice it to protect the weak or those you love, those people left behind will always have a sadness having lost you. They’ll never be happy. When you learn to live between the fear of your own death and the will to die for what you believe in, only then will you be able to defeat your enemy.”

  With those final words, David and Kermit departed.

  J.D. sat with his face in his hands contemplating Kermit’s ideology. His mind was too clouded from the doctor’s drugs to think clearly. He felt his head begin to throb, but at least this time he knew it was just a headache.

  ***

  David and Kermit walked out of J.D.’s office in search of Ryan, who they believed had a more rational and objective mind, in hopes of convincing him to go against his commander and alter the plan.

  “No,” Ryan firmly told them. “I will not alter the plan, I will not go against J.D.’s orders.”

  “This is insane,” Kermit responded in a heightened and agitated tone. “The only thing that man is doing is digging his own grave. His mind is clouded from the drugs he’s been taking for God knows how long; he’s unable to think rationally. The plan is going to fail and he’ll die needlessly.”

  “The plan stands. Even if I thought it unsound, there’s nothing I can do. I simply don’t have the manpower to engage in an all out battle with Stone’s forces.”

  “Then give David and me enough weapons and ammunition and we’ll back him up.”

  “No. Our enemy is watching. If they don’t see that J.D. is the only one here, we lose our only chance at luring Stone himself out of hiding. If we don’t accomplish that, then there’s a possibility he and his men can find us again.”

  David was not satisfied with Ryan’s answer. He knew he needed to resort to blackmail if he and Kermit were to elicit a change of mind. “Damn it, Ryan. We saved your life,” David reminded him. “Have you forgotte
n? You owe us,” he informed him, an insistence in his tone for repayment.

  “Your attempt at extortion is futile. I will not betray J.D.’s trust, and I advise both of you to do the same. Let this matter go.”

  “Are you threatening us, son?” Kermit asked, giving him a look of disdain.

  “You both made promises to him. Did you not? You, David, gave him your word to see Marisol to safety, and you Kermit, need I remind you of your deal? Will you break your words?”

  Ryan was well aware of J.D.’s fail-safe for the armory if it fell into Stone’s possession, and he wanted Kermit to know he knew it without revealing it to David, who was certainly more attached to J.D.

  There was nothing more to say, Kermit and David knew it, but it didn’t mean they liked it. Their old survivor group creed was much like the military belief, to never leave a man behind. Although it had been necessary when they departed for England for J.D.’s own safety, but this time it wasn’t needed, and it gnawed at them.

  Ryan, too, knew that he could not go against his commander’s request. If Stone had any suspicion there was anyone remaining in the armory then the plan could go afoul. “Damn it,” he muttered, and then kicked his desk in aggravation.

  7

  Dead Reckoning

  The strategy hadn’t gone as planned.

  He crawled out of the armory on his belly with crippled, bloodied legs, two bloody smears upon the armory floor, marking his way like snails leaving behind their slime trails. He painfully made his way to the archway of the main entrance, through the opened heavy oak doors, and across the main landing of the portico. Arriving at the next set of steps he pulled himself forward twice, before his body weight and gravity took over. J.D. slid down the steps to the bottom landing near the sidewalk of Lexington Avenue. He lay stomach down, but face up and perpendicular across the landing in an awkward position. His head tilted slightly to one side hanging over the first step. One arm was bent at a right angle toward his head, the other slightly tucked under his lower abdomen. With blurred vision he stared up through black-colored eyes to the sculptured winged eagle that formed the keystone of the entry arch.

  As he lay bleeding, he thought it should have been magnificent flying off the balcony doing a forward flip, majestically making a perfect landing like a gymnast dismounting from a set of uneven bars, and then ripping out the throats of two of his enemies with his bare hands, blood spraying into the air, like he was in a Shaw Brothers Studio film from the late 70s—but it was not. Without the drugs he felt the fear of his own death, no longer having the sensation of invincibility, and it frightened him. Perhaps the doctor had been correct, he had been given the will and means to defeat his enemy through chemical stimulation and now without it he had failed to defeat his enemy. Or perhaps it was the simple fact the Stone’s men were numerous, far too many for him to dodge all the barrages of bullets from his enemies’ weapons. He knew he was in serious condition, but he refused to die just yet. It never occurred to him that the doubt and fear he was experiencing was mostly psychological, and not the loss of chemical courage.

  It hadn’t been one bullet that had penetrated his leg, like what had happened at Pier 17. He had been shot multiple times, most of the slugs lodged in his upper legs. Three shots had struck him in his left leg. Another impacted his right leg. The gunshot wounds were immediately life threatening—that was if he could remove the projectiles.

  Stone had been extremely careful and calculating in his seizure of the armory, waiting a full day to make a play for it. When dawn broke the day after J.D.’s men had left him, Stone’s men came. There were more of them than he thought Stone had. There had been more than a dozen men that had come into the armory looking for him, and he had dispatched ten of them. The rest J.D. believed had fled, since none of his enemy had followed to finish him off.

  There were footfalls approaching, but J.D. could not turn his head to see who it was. He was teetering on the brink of unconsciousness. He knew the odds were it was the enemy. If Edward Stone were smart, as he knew he was, he would have held a reserve to be called up as reinforcements.

  J.D.’s head abruptly turned. He felt a sole of a boot pressing on his face. His head rocked to-and-fro. He looked up. It was Stone. A young girl with blonde hair with her hands bound behind her back and a dog collar and leash around her neck stood next to him, firmly restrained by two of Stone’s men.

  Stone came around and stood above him, his back to the armory. He looked around to be sure they were alone. “My, my. Look at the state you’re in,” Stone casually spoke as he looked down to J.D.’s mutated eyes. “It’s true. The plague changed you. I heard all sorts of things about you. Does that surprise you? No, I guess it wouldn’t. Little Peter was so sweet and willing to please—and oh so obedient,” he told him, a smile of satisfaction on his face. “And such a wealth of information.” Stone looked around again as a precaution, and then with a pleased smile Edward Coleman Stone squatted next to J.D., and then taunted, “So, Colonel. Here we are. And there is my armory. It still stands, every brick, every stone. And there you are, a broken, defeated freak.” Stone’s smile grew wider. “The strong live. The weak die. That is just how it is. That is a simple fact. And you are one of the weak. Weak because your life is just to protect weak people, so you don’t understand your own happiness or how to enjoy life.”

  J.D. did not respond, but just gave Stone a blank stare.

  Stone gestured to his men to bring the girl forward.

  Edward Stone’s voice was calm, but held great disdain for his enemy. “You see what I brought you? I brought one of my children. I heard this one is very special to you, the one that belongs to that little smidget whose tongue I cut out. I thought about slitting the little bitch’s throat and watching the life drain from her as I fucked her off to eternity,” he said coldly, “but I thought the better of it. You see I wanted you to witness her death. Watch her die in front of your eyes, knowing that you failed to save her, to save any of the children.”

  J.D. gave Stone a look of acknowledgement.

  “Yes, Colonel, some are still alive—the special ones.” Stone grabbed the leash and pulled the girl to him. “But this used up piece of cunt,” he told J.D., “I’m going to do to her what you did to the only friend I ever had. I’m going to butcher her and tie her to the fence,” he conveyed. “I want you to understand the depths of my pain and anguish over the loss of Richard.”

  Stone put a knife to Victoria’s throat. He shivered with anticipation. “Tell me you’re sorry,” Stone demanded. “Tell me you’re sorry for killing Richard, and maybe, just maybe, if I truly believe you, I’ll spare her life.”

  J.D.’s lips began to move, but no sound came from them.

  “That’s it?! Come on, Colonel! I want to hear you apologize!” he shouted, his calm demeanor turning to rage. He pressed the knife firmly against Victoria’s throat as a warning.

  J.D. looked at him, and then in a raspy tone said, “Do it.”

  From the building directly across the street from the armory’s entrance a shot echoed. The man who stood closest to Stone dropped to the ground, his skull blown apart, before the sound had diminished. By the time Stone and the other man realized what had happened, J.D. had all ready grabbed Stone’s closest leg, piercing it deeply with his talons, and had yanked him. Stone let out a howl of extreme pain, just as the second man collapsed from a bullet through the throat. Edward Stone dropped the knife and Victoria ran into the armory.

  Stone grabbed at the knife that had fallen less than a foot away from him. He grimaced under the extreme pain of talons piercing his leg but was determined to reach the weapon. J.D. could feel he was losing his grip. He closed his eyes and let his humanity go. A fierce intensity rose in his face. He let out a screech nearly as loud as the one at the bonfire. He rose, releasing his enemy. What Edward Stone saw in J.D.’s face scared the hell out of him. He grabbed the knife, but it was to
o late. J.D. grabbed the man by his shirt and pants and lifted him in the air above his head. Stone flailed attempting to get free. J.D. turned and threw the man into the compound. Stone crashed on the pavement, unconscious. J.D. let out another shriek, but before he had finished, he, too, collapsed unconscious, and then tumbled down the stairs.

  The plan had not gone exactly as the two of them had strategized, although the outcome had the desired results. Stone had been captured alive.

  J.D. was aware that torturing Stone to get the location of any surviving hostages—if there were any—would be futile. Stone was not the type of person who would give up their whereabouts, even if it meant his own life. Nonetheless, J.D. was pretty certain that he was also the sort of person that would want to keep his captives close. That is if he truly had kept any alive. However, at the moment he was in no condition to search for them.

  J.D. was more concerned about the welfare of Peter’s daughter and the securing of their unconscious enemy so he lied to Peter regarding his injuries, telling him that they were merely flesh wounds and nothing he should be concerned about. Peter did not have to look far for Victoria. She had been inside the second set of double doors watching the commotion after hearing the screech. Victoria, too, had heard stories during her imprisonment about the mutant leader of the armory, who screeched like an owl and was hunting down her captors and brutally slaughtering them. Her curiosity with the screeching man overshadowed her instinct for flight. She watched as the wounded man lifted her tormentor in the air and tossed him like a beanbag, knocking him senseless. She didn’t immediately come out of hiding when she saw her father. In part because she was shocked to see him alive after Stone repeatedly told her that he was dead and in a pit rotting, and partly because she was unsure if Stone was truly incapacitated. When Victoria saw her father securing Stone, she timidly and cautiously stepped down the stairs toward him. She began to sob in his arms as he held her, not for what she had endured but for what Stone had done to her father.