Miller ran to the other side of the arena, breathing hard. She felt her face freeze into a wide skeletal grin. Her body felt burning hot. Not having that super strength was already taking its toll. She remembered what to do and how to do it, but wondered how long she could manage to hold out.
The crowd had gone silent again. Scratch was laughing.
Three zombies hung back, and helped one fallen comrade. Yes, they were working together, something no one had thought possible until recently. Luther was down for the count, but the others still posed a threat. The fact that they were also conferring was still a distinctly creepy concept. A heartbeat later, the zombie conference was over and the things came at her.
This time all at once.
Miller didn’t wait for them to trap her against the wall again. She charged, clubbing the nearest zombie with Luther’s upper arm—it stumbled but kept its feet—and stabbed another through the eye with the slim bone in Luther’s lower arm. It went down and stayed down. She left the lower arm stuck in the zombie’s head and swung the belt. Creatures moaned and fell.
Miller was getting into the groove. Swinging and slashing with Luther’s arm and the belt, she cut a path through the startled zombies. By now, two were down for the count, and three were confused, disoriented, or just disorganized. Blood had splattered everywhere. Miller could no longer hear the crowd. She was enraged and fully alive. It was almost the old days, when she’d been high on the zombie virus, all weirdly horny and full of blood lust.
“Hey, Abraham!” Miller shouted. “Do I have to kill all of your pet zombies before you realize this isn’t going to work? I have no intention of dying today.” To punctuate her point, she smashed another zombie’s head in. It fell sideways and stayed down.
Abraham’s face was bright red with anger. “Bring her to me.”
“Come get me yourself.”
She braced herself. The guards didn’t move. Miller couldn’t tell if they were more afraid of the zombies or her at this point, and frankly she didn’t care. She hit another zombie with the buckle. It went down hard. The last one of the zombies stood still almost as if it had become too scared to attack. Miller laughed. She went up to the guards who stood at the arena entrance and barred the tunnel that lead to the outside. They were both pimple-faced teenaged boys. They were clearly too terrified to face her.
“You heard him,” Miller said. “Let’s go.”
She held the upper arm bone to her side, a samurai sword, and the belt became a whip. The boys who stood there were stunned. Then one came back to himself, and gestured for her to follow. He made absolutely no move to restrain her or make her drop her weapons, which suited Miller just fine. Above them the crowd stayed silent. The metal gate swung shut behind Miller. She moved into the cool tunnel.
She’d done it.
A moment later, they were in the courtyard outside the cave entrance. Some of the zealots hung back to watch, some backed Abraham. The preacher stood there glowering, puffed up with rage. Miller could see Scratch, Sheppard, Lovell, and Rat were still there in the background, safe for the moment. But where was little Elizabeth? Coated with blood and brains, Miller walked a few steps into the open with her makeshift weapons high.
“Really, was that the best you could do?” Miller shook her head. She lowered the butchered body parts and the belt before Abraham could say anything.
“You don’t know what kind of trouble you are in, do you?”
“Enlighten me,” Miller said.
“You and your friends will suffer horribly for this.” Abraham turned to the guard who’d led Miller to him. “Restrain her.”
Miller turned to face the guard. “You really want to try that, Sparky?” She flexed her arms, showing him Luther’s bones and the belt, but did not move to threaten him. Miller could see in the kid’s eyes that he was scared of her. She smiled brightly. He still held a rifle, so she waited him out.
Instead of confronting her, the guard turned to Abraham. “Father, my faith is shaken. You said the Angels were here to protect us. If that is true, then how could this woman have destroyed them so easily?”
“Yes, Father,” said another zealot, a blind old woman. “What does this mean?”
Abraham looked purple and ready to explode. “She is an agent of the Evil One, sent to destroy your faith in God.”
“No, I’m not. I’m Sheriff Penny Miller of Flat Rock, and I’m here to take you all to safety.” She had no idea how she would pull that part off, but then, she’d had no idea how to get out of that arena alive. She’d just have think of something when the time came. “People, that bomb I spoke of is real. And it is also about to go off. We only have a couple of hours left to make it out of the area.”
Abraham looked worse, almost ready to have a stroke. He strode over to the guard who had challenged him and snatched the rifle out of his hands. He walked up to Miller, pointed it at her. Miller stared back. She stopped smiling.
“On your knees,” Abraham ordered.
“No,” said Miller.
The barrel of the rifle was pointed directly at Miller’s head. But she wasn’t looking at that. Instead, she was distracted by the blond zealot who came up behind Abraham. It was the kind young man who’d helped her back in the cave, the one who had seemed ashamed. His female partner was nowhere to be seen. The man was holding a long kitchen knife, kept glancing back and forth from the knife to Abraham, like he didn’t know what to do with it. He seemed nervous as a horny groom on his wedding night.
“Fine,” said Abraham. “Die on your feet, then.” He cycled the bolt of the rifle with expert ease and sighted down the barrel.
“Stop,” said the man with the knife. “I can’t let you do that.”
Abraham’s eyes widened. He turned to stare at the blond man. The rifle went with him. It was now aimed at the stomach of his follower. “How dare you speak to me that way?”
The man shook with fear. He lowered the knife, pleading, “Let her go, Father Abraham. Let all of them go.”
Abraham said, “You shall go. To hell.” He fired. The shot blew the man backwards. Some of the zealots cried out in anger, some ran away. Blood pooled in the afternoon dirt. People shouted and cried. The world was collapsing around them. Their faith was shattered and their motley band was falling apart. Abraham turned back to Miller, who was just raising the arm-club to take him out. She froze with her arm high. Her heart was pounding and her head hurt. Miller knew perfectly well that she wasn’t bulletproof.
“And now you will die too,” Abraham said.
“I wouldn’t try that, if I were you.”
Miller was startled by the familiar voice. Well, I’ll be damned…
Someone new had appeared behind Abraham. A hooded male zealot stood there. He held a .357 against the side of Abraham’s head. He pulled back the hammer. Abraham stared at Miller. His new life had fallen apart too, and it was all over but the shouting. Abraham pondered. She read his eyes as he reached a decision.
Miller grabbed for the barrel of the rifle. Abraham grunted as she tried to jerk the weapon up and out of his hands but didn’t let go. Two guns went off simultaneously.
Abraham’s head exploded.
Miller’s did not.
Miller let go of the rifle barrel with her ears ringing. She looked around at the shocked faces of Abraham’s followers. They stared down at Abraham’s body. Several more ran away. Some fell to their knees in prayer. No one made a move to threaten Miller or her friends. The sun was slipping behind the tallest rocks and shadows once again ruled the earth.
“Are you okay, Penny?”
“I’m fine,” she said. Her eyes spilled over with genuine tears. “Where the hell did you come from, Terrill Lee?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
3:26pm – 2 hours 34 minutes remaining
“We can’t take all of you with us!” Miller held her palms out. She shouted loudly, trying desperately to calm the former zealots. Several had run away in terror and returned to the abandoned min
es and caves. There were only about twenty of them left now, and not all of them wanted anything to do with Miller and her group. They walked in slow circles or stood frozen in clumps, confused and frightened.
“Please.” The blind old woman, wringing her wrinkled hands.
Miller looked around at the last stragglers. Some didn’t believe in anything anymore, much less the rumored bomb that was supposed to go off in a couple of hours. Eight of them had washed their hands of the infidels, as they referred to those who had lost faith in Abraham’s bullshit, or those who never actually believed. The loyal eight had carefully, lovingly collected Abraham’s body and washed it down. Then they’d taken a shovel and pick axe and gone higher in the rocks to burn him. Miller didn’t like the idea of a fire large enough to signal bad guys, but she was glad to see them go. She felt grateful that they hadn’t opened fire themselves when Terrill Lee had blown Abraham’s head off.
The rest of the band were desperate for leadership and now believed her. They had become very anxious to get as far away from that bomb as they could.
“You can’t just leave us here to die, Sheriff!” said Vanessa. She had taken off her zealot’s robe, and now appeared as unassuming as she had back in Flat Rock. Miller took all that with a grain of salt. She looked innocent enough, but she had been willing to make a meal out of human flesh. Miller’s gorge rose when she remembered the dried meat they’d all eaten down below. She didn’t care to ask where it had come from.
Miller stood her ground. “We’re taking the Winnebago. Your people won’t fit.”
“It’s not your vehicle,” said a bearded man named Gary. He’d been a trial lawyer. Just another kind of cannibal, Miller thought grimly.
“You want to try and take it away from us?” Scratch had acquired a new weapon and promptly regained his beloved “bad ass” status. He held the Colt .45 revolver in one hand, aimed at the dirt. He spun the chamber obsessively with the other. Miller sighed. All she could think about was the ticking bomb.
“But you have cars,” said Terrill Lee. “They’re parked over there.” He pointed to two of them. “Your people drove me here in one.”
Gary glared back. “Yes, but that pick-up truck you rode in and the Winnebago are the only vehicles that still run.”
“We used up the fuel and batteries surviving the first few weeks,” Vanessa said.
“What a bunch of clowns,” Scratch said, half under his breath.
Terrill Lee reacted, a huge grin splitting his face. “If they were clowns, they could all fit inside the same car.”
To Miller’s surprise, Sheppard, Rat, Lovell, and even Scratch laughed out loud, despite the circumstances. Hell, it was kind of funny.
“Look, Sheriff,” said lawyer Gary, ignoring Terrill Lee, “it’s very simple. Either we all get out together, or you will be guilty of murder.”
Rat, who stood nearby, nearly choked on the irony. “You have got to be kidding me. You were going to slaughter us like cattle. So don’t you dare take the high road and accuse us of murder!”
Gary shrugged. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Scratch aimed his weapon at the attorney. He squinted playfully, his tongue stuck out and to one side. “Gee, I couldn’t agree with you more, counselor.”
“We did what we had to do,” Gary protested, weakly.
“You people ain’t exactly the Donner Party,” said Scratch. The spinning chamber clicked loudly. Gary twitched and took a step back. Scratch said, “Penny, time’s a’wastin’. The sun says we ain’t got much left.”
Miller glanced over at Terrill Lee’s watch. In just over two hours, this conversation would be moot. They had to beat feet and fast.
“We really don’t have time for this,” said Sheppard. He had fashioned a crutch from an old branch, and was soon hobbling around much better than his frail appearance let on. He’d clearly been trying to play helpless in case he’d found an opportunity to help out. Nevertheless, Lovell stood nearby in case Sheppard began to fall. He’d be no good to anyone flat on his ass. “May I speak to you privately, Sheriff?”
“Two minutes.” Miller excused herself from the small cluster of ex-zealots. She motioned for Rat, Scratch, and Terrill Lee to join her. They walked over where Sheppard stood with Lovell. Miller motioned them into a huddle.
“What’s on your mind, Karl?”
Sheppard whispered. “Look, there’s something you don’t know about here, Penny. It isn’t the nuke that Rat and her team brought that is the real problem.”
“Okay, what’s the problem, then?” Miller slumped. She was pretty certain that she didn’t really want to hear this.
“I’ve been talking things over with Kurt here.” He hooked a thumb at Lovell. “He knows his shit. That bomb is going to cause a lot more trouble than just making a bright flash and a big hole in the desert.”
“Okay, what else is it going to do?” Miller asked impatiently.
Sheppard looked ill, and this time not from the gunshot wound in his leg. “Have you ever heard of Yucca Mountain?”
Terrill Lee piped up. “The nuclear waste facility? I thought they cancelled that project.”
“They did, back in 2009.” Sheppard took a deep breath. “Penny, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I didn’t know all the facts.”
“Know what?” Penny looked back at the small crowd. She felt a growing sense of panic and guilt. “Come on, Karl. Out with it. We don’t have time for games.”
Sheppard took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Crystal Palace wasn’t always a medical research facility, remember? The structure was originally built underground back in the 1950s as a nuclear test facility, and then expanded over the decades until it became a biological weapons lab.”
Miller blinked as she caught on. “Oh, no.”
Scratch said, “I don’t get it.”
Lovell spoke urgently. “Scratch, because there was no Yucca Mountain to ship nuclear waste to, the Army continued to store the waste right there at the site.” He paused to let his words sink in. Scratch stiffened and swore under his breath.
Rat shook her head sadly. “Lovell is right, Penny. There’s a reason General Gifford chose to nuke that place. That little firecracker we installed won’t do much on its own. Hell, at this distance, you might as well break out the popcorn for the show. But when all that radioactive waste is vaporized and thrown up into the atmosphere, it will seed the entire area. It’s going to make a dead zone over two hundred miles in diameter.”
“Good God.”
“Lovell, tell her the rest,” said Rat. “She deserves to know.”
Miller’s head snapped around. “What? It gets worse?”
“One of our mission parameters was to setup a sister bomb at Nellis,” Lovell said. “That’s why we stopped there too, apart from picking up the bomb we brought with us. It was all top secret. Sorry.”
“But that wasn’t Nellis we stopped at,” complained Terrill Lee. “It was North Las Vegas Airport. I told you that at the time.”
“We knew,” said Rat. “We didn’t actually have permission to operate out of a real military base. All of that doesn’t matter now. The plain fact is that Nellis is going away very soon, along with most of Nevada, and a few parts of Idaho, California, Arizona, and Utah.”
“Back up,” interrupted Miller. “What do you mean a real military base? I know you jokers are mercenaries, but who the hell are you working for, anyway?”
“We were working for Gifford,” said Rat plainly. “I think the question we all want to ask is who was he working for?”
The sun was sinking. The dispirited crowd started straggling away. Precious time was elapsing. Miller felt her heart picking up speed as the situation clarified.
“Rat, let me see if I got this straight. You dragged me and my friends here on a one way mission to Hell, gave the secret to making a gazillion zombies to someone with, shall we say, questionable motives, and we’re standing here talking while in, what?” Mill
er turned to Terrill Lee. “How much time?”
“Two and a half hours,” he said glumly.
“Two and a half hours,” Miller continued, “we’re not only going to need SPF four million, but we’re also going to be covered by a cloud of radioactive waste three states wide. Is that about it?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” Lovell said.
Sheppard and Rat nodded with agreement. “There it is.”
“And we can’t leave just all these people here to die,” Miller said, almost as a non-sequitur. “But we don’t have room to take them along, either.”
“Wait, why the hell can’t we leave them?” Scratch stopped spinning the chamber of his pistol. “We don’t owe them dog shit.”
“They ain’t exactly victims,” Terrill Lee said.
“Sheriff,” said Lovell. “Empty, that Winnebago only goes seventy miles an hour, tops. If we got in that bucket of bolts right now and hauled ass, and took it to its top speed in the time we got left, we might—I repeat, might—be able to get to safety. With thirty or more people aboard, I’d guess it wouldn’t get over forty. That isn’t nearly fast enough. We’d all die.”
“And, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’ve really got to go,” Sheppard said.
Miller stood there, torn to shreds. If she left these people to die, she would have given up everything that she held dear. Killing zombies is one thing, but she had sworn to protect the living. She was frozen for a moment, stuck between her sense of duty to her friends and her sense of responsibility for her fellow human beings. And then there was poor little Elizabeth.
“What if we drove them to that school bus back in Flat Rock? That would at least give them a fighting chance to escape.” Miller was grasping at straws and she knew it.
“It might,” agreed Lovell reluctantly.
Rat interrupted. “Give us a moment, would you, gentlemen?”
Scratch, Terrill Lee, Sheppard, and Lovell all stepped away.
The Hungry (Book 2): The Wrath of God Page 21