“Penny,” Rat said softly, “I know this is tough on you. I can see you really care about people, and that’s all really admirable and shit. But I want to make something perfectly clear to you. We are leaving. If you want to come with us, I suggest you get on board the Winnebago and shut up about it, because the decision has been made. We’re leaving. These people are staying here. If you have a problem with that, you’re welcome to hang back with them. I’m making this call. Got it?”
Miller darkened. “We agreed I make the decisions, Rat.”
“Only while you kept making good ones. You almost got us all killed by letting down our guard around Abraham, and we are clearly running out of time, so I figure it’s time for new leadership.”
“We all bet on him because we had to, and, if you’ll recall, I kept you from being the main course. Besides, I’m in charge because everyone, including your team, flat out does what I say.”
Rat smiled without mirth. “Look at them. They’re already out of here. Our chances of survival go down every minute we stay here, and you’re the only thing standing in the way of leaving.” Rat poked a finger at Miller, almost, but not quite, touching her t-shirt. “Now we both need to get this straight. If you want to live, you’ll come with us and right fucking now. Make up your mind.”
“What about Elizabeth? She’s coming with us too.”
Rat cocked her head. “I thought you knew.”
Miller’s heart couldn’t take much more of this.
“Knew what? Where is she?”
Rat’s mask slipped a bit. The sadness in her dark eyes gave her soul away. She lowered her voice. “Penny, why do you think those first three zombies looked so fat and happy?”
Miller stopped breathing. Her eyes burned.
Rat walked away, already signaling the others to follow. Lovell fell in line behind her. Scratch, Terrill Lee, and Sheppard looked at Miller, and she stared back. Miller made up her mind. She went up to the three of them. “Rat is right,” she said. “Let’s go.” They began walking in the direction of the Winnebago.
“Uh, Sheriff?” Gary the lawyer. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment, counselor,” Miller said as she walked. She was already mad enough to spit nails, but they wouldn’t get very far if they tipped the frightened zealots off to their plans.
“Wait! Where are you all going?” Some of the zealots returned from the rocks. They weren’t pissed off yet, but Gary might try to lead a rebellion.
Rat stopped. “Calm down, damn it! We’re just going to clean Abraham’s crap out of the Winnebago to see how many of you can fit. Don’t freak out. Relax. You won’t be here much longer.”
“Don’t you want any help?” Vanessa called.
“I think you have all done enough already,” Rat said with a straight face. She stayed behind casually but on guard. Miller and the others knew they just had to reach the Winnebago. They covered ground. One by one they got inside. The stragglers watched dully, perhaps used to being screwed over by the leadership. Finally, Rat trotted to catch up. The sunshine was fading and a brisk wind rose up as if to push them from behind.
“Lovell,” Rat said, throwing him the keys. She stepped up into the vehicle, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“You bet your ass.” He inserted the key and turned the engine over. It started smoothly, and Lovell put it into gear. Miller cracked open her window. She studied the faces of the remaining zealots. Perhaps they deserved their miserable fate, but she didn’t want to take any pleasure in what was about to happen.
“Get food and water and supplies,” Miller called. “Go deep underground and stay there for as long as you can.” She leaned back, relieved of command and not sorry to have forfeited this particular decision. It wouldn’t be easy to live with either way. Lovell floored the accelerator, spewing dust and debris. He yanked the wheel in a manner that brought back memories of Abraham.
They were gone before any of the zealots could react. Lovell called out, “Where to, Rat?”
Much to Miller’s surprise, Rat hesitated this time. She didn’t know the territory, didn’t know exactly where to go. So Miller answered. “North to Elko, east to Salt Lake. We should be able to get just far enough away that we’ll be safe. Besides, I know some people in Salt Lake who can help us, provided they are still alive.”
Rat nodded gratefully. Lovell roared down the dirt road. He took them out of the recreation area and down onto the deserted highway. He mashed his foot down on the gas pedal, and brought the Winnebago up to full speed. It rattled and complained but covered ground. No one spoke for a long, long time. They were all just glad to be moving again.
“So, T. L.,” said Scratch loudly, “what the hell happened to you back there?”
“It’s kind of a long story,”
“We have maybe two and a half hours,” said Sheppard. “More, if Lovell can get some distance between us and that bomb. What happened? How is it that they let you live?”
“I’m just damned happy to see you.” Miller smiled and held his hand.
Scratch steamed. “You know, on second thought maybe we should talk about something else.” He sat down heavily in the passenger seat with his back to them. “Like how much it sucks that little kid got sacrificed.”
“No,” Miller said, firmly, “we’re not ever going to talk about that. Ever.” Her eyes told Scratch to drop the subject. Miller had felt enough heartache to last a lifetime. Elizabeth was the final straw. She resolved to toughen up.
Lovell turned his head to look back into the cabin. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to hear this. You were zombie-burgers, last we heard of you, Terrill Lee. What the hell happened?”
“What can I say? They didn’t kill me, they took me prisoner. I was actually kidnapped by zombies. They didn’t even try to bite me.”
Scratch was so stunned he forgot to be upset that Miller was fawning over Terrill Lee. “Say that again?”
“I don’t understand it myself. Karl, you saw me get dragged off by those things?”
“You bet your ass I did,” Sheppard said.
“Well, three of them took me around the back of the supermarket and dragged me into the storage room. They were different from the others we’ve seen, smarter even. They worked together. I know how crazy that sounds, but it’s true.”
“I doesn’t sound crazy to me,” Miller said. “Not anymore.”
“Anyway, I kept waiting for them to bite me and end it, but instead they threw me into the cold room and left me locked in.”
Miller and Sheppard exchanged glances. Sheppard said, “This is not good.”
Terrill Lee continued. “There were some other people in there along with a couple of dismembered corpses. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen. Two or three zombies would come to the door every thirty minutes or so, and this one guy who was there would hack off a part of one of the corpses and feed it to the zombies. The guy was just soaked in blood and gore. I didn’t recognize him from town, so I just started thinking of him as Sweeney Todd. He explained that zombies want fresh human flesh. And according to his theory, when a zombie bites a living person, the virus gets into their system so fast that it kind of contaminates the meat.
“That’s probably true. Zombies don’t eat zombie meat,” Miller said. “They can’t live on that. Makes sense.”
“Yes,” Terrill Lee said. “So they’re too damn hungry, right? Most of the time they just go for the kill regardless of the fact that they will probably only get a little bite of flesh before the next victim then becomes a zombie too. But here is the kicker. If they are well fed they seem to be able to access some higher faculties that we didn’t know about. Hell, they can actually reason in a primitive way. They can communicate. They can strategize. I’m guessing they’re more like a pack of wolves than dumb-assed dead people, but there it is.”
Miller and Sheppard locked eyes. That’s got to be it, thought Miller, and she could tell that Sheppard was
thinking it too. Things were getting worse and worse by the day. Maybe the bomb is a good thing after all.
“So these zombies would come to the door, take a leg or an arm or a torso, and chow down. And Sweeney Todd—the only one of us with a coat, by the way—was feeding them. The rest of us stood around freezing and being scared out of our minds. Eventually, he ran out of corpses, you know? So Sweeney has to come after one of the other people in the cold room. There’s just me, a man named Frank, and a woman named Eunice. Frank and Eunice were exhausted and paralyzed by fear and disgust, almost ready to just lie down and die to get it over with. And I can’t say as I blamed them.”
“But you weren’t,” Miller said. “Not old Terrill Lee.”
“Hell, no. So that asshole Sweeney Todd comes after Eunice with his big machete, and Frank is going to let him take her. I pick up a big can of tomatoes and hit him on the head. I crack the fucker’s skull open and snag his weapon. The zombies come to the door, and I chop them into little bits with the machete. We get out.”
“Where are they now?” Rat asked.
Terrill Lee shook his head. “At first I think that Frank and Eunice are just too cold to show me how happy they were that I rescued them from Sweeny Todd and the zombies, but then it turns out that they are members of that cult back there. They are actually sacrificing themselves for Abraham or something like that. So now they are out of zombies, and their butcher is dead, they don’t know what to do. I have the only weapon.”
“You took over.” Miller smiled.
“We got in their pickup and I convinced them to take me back to see Abraham.”
Even Scratch was impressed. “Well I’ll be damned.”
“Hey, it didn’t take a genius to realize that Abraham’s group would be bad for my health. As soon as we got to the caves, I walked up to one of the guards Frank and Eunice were talking to, waved the machete and took the gun out of his hand. He was so shocked that he just let me walk away with the pistol. Apparently, nobody ever stood up to those folks. But we all sure as hell did today, didn’t we, Penny?”
“Yeah,” Miller said.
“Well, that certainly explains the behavior of those zombies in the arena,” said Sheppard. “The fat, happy ones are even more dangerous than the starving ones.”
“So how the hell did Abraham figure all that out on his own?” asked Rat.
“Probably became obvious from sacrificing people to the zombies. He saw them act differently when well fed. He must have stumbled upon the secret. Then he used their new adaptive behaviors to make himself seem all-powerful. He was going to be King of the new world order, or something.”
“So what?” Scratch asked. “So we know to avoid any well-fed, overweight zombies. What good is all this going to do us? As far as I’m concerned, I’ve seen enough of the undead army to last for one lifetime anyway. This entire place is going to be toast in a couple of hours. Once we get back to civilization, we won’t have a lot of use for this kind of specialized knowledge.”
“What it really means,” Sheppard said, “is that the super-soldier program wasn’t as big a failure as we thought. It means that all that data that Ripper and Brubeck recovered from Crystal Palace can actually lead to a useful drug. Even that Super Soldiers are possible.”
“If that’s true,” said Rat, “we’re all fucked. It could spread to the whole damn world.”
“Sounds about right,” nodded Lovell.
“So we have to find that data and destroy it,” said Miller.
“It’s not that simple, Penny,” Sheppard protested. “If we destroy it, we’ll never be able to cure you. No, we need to get the data back in our hands where it’s safe.”
Scratch laughed. “How the hell do you reckon we do that? Those motherfuckers, Ripper and Brubeck, are probably on a beach right now, sipping tropical fruit drinks. Gifford’s a thousand miles from here reading through all that scientific crap. It’s way too late to change the game.”
Miller looked at Sheppard, and Sheppard met her eyes. For once they were on the same page without having to say a single word.
“Did you hear me?” Scratch said, with a note of confusion in his voice. “I just said it’s way too late.”
“No,” said Miller, smiling broadly. “Actually, it’s not.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
4:07pm – 1 hour 53 minutes remaining
They roared along, the highway ahead unreeling like a black ink ribbon, the long dark shape broken only by a rapid blur of white dashes. The afternoon sky looked crisp and clear as it appeared beyond the beat-up dashboard, the small white clouds floating balls of cotton. The sun was drifting down into the mountains, the desert floor cooling. They were running out of clock. Everyone kept checking the time. Miller felt they were driving rapidly into the mouth of some giant beast. The others were still confused and uncertain. Miller wasn’t. She’d willed herself to disguise her own anxiety. This would work. Hell, this simply had to work.
“You sure we got time for a fucking rest stop?”
The tension was starting to get the best of Scratch. For all his macho posturing, his pacing and muttering had made it abundantly clear that he had “absolutely no fucking desire to become a burned up, mutated, radioactive, freaky-assed meat puppet,” as he so eloquently put it. Even under these panicked circumstances, part of Miller had admired that crisp turn of phrase.
“It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” Miller said. She turned to Lovell, who sat rigidly at the wheel, his right foot flooring the gas. “Turn off on Mountain City Highway. It’s just on the other side of the airport. Careful you don’t tip us over.”
The sun was drooping low in the sky behind them, the rich colors spreading slowly across the hardpan. It was closing in on sunset as they turned off the main highway into Elko. As they suspected, the medium-sized town was trashed and deserted. The now customary wrecked cars, punctuated with white skeletons that had been nearly picked clean by fat vultures and clever varmints. Trash dotted the landscape. The zombies had hit Elko first, back when Sheppard’s old partner had infected half the shoppers at the local outlet mall. According to the reports that Miller had read in Vegas later on, Elko had been wiped out within a few hours. No one had seen it coming or reacted quickly enough to stop it from spreading. Miller wasn’t disturbed. She didn’t have to wonder what it must have been like when the zombies consumed this town. She had lived it for herself back at the jailhouse in Flat Rock.
“How do you know about this place, again, Penny?” asked Terrill Lee. He was looking kind of suspicious, his head moving back and forth between Miller and Sheppard. Terrill Lee knew his ex-wife well enough to know when something was up.
Miller sighed. “I dated the Elko County sheriff on and off for a spell. Old Charlie, he showed me around the headquarters a couple of times.”
“And you’re sure we’re going to find what we need there?” Rat asked.
“As sure as I can be,” Miller said.
Terrill Lee’s head stopped moving. His eyes widened. “Hold on, Penny. When the hell were you dating this here sheriff, exactly?”
Miller scowled. “Don’t you dare take the high road with me, Terrill Lee. We were separated for the second time back then, remember? You know perfectly well that I caught you red-handed and red-dicked while you were banging that sleazy bitch Marilyn. And you were in our bed. So what if I wanted to head over to Elko when I was off shift and spend me some quality time with a gentleman. Charlie Robinson was my business then and he still is now. Mine, not yours.”
Terrill Lee was flashing his teeth. He was a dog with a fresh bone. “How come this didn’t come up at the divorce hearing?”
“Shit on a stick, T. L., just give it a rest. She ain’t yours no more, partner. Get over it.” Scratch smirked confidently. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but she’s mine.”
Miller blanched. “Excuse me?”
Lovell interrupted with relish. “There’s the jail, Penny.”
The Winnebago roar
ed down Mountain City Highway and screeched to a halt. Trash and dirt sprayed up the sides of the Winnebago and clouded their view for a moment. Miller broke eye contact with Terrill Lee and Scratch to focus on what lay right outside, past the dirt-streaked tinted windows of the Winnebago. The engine ticked and a vulture flapped noisy wings as it left the carcass of a dead hound.
From outside, the Elko sheriff’s headquarters and jail seemed mostly intact. There was some fire damage on the east side of the building, and a few of the windows were broken, but overall the place looked to be in fair condition. More importantly to Miller, there were no piles of headless zombies strewn around right outside the windows and doors. Old Charlie and his deputies were dead by now, she was sure of that, but this hadn’t been their last stand. Wherever the fighting had happened, it had been elsewhere.
“Pull up closer, park right in front,” said Miller. Lovell started the engine again and rolled forward. When the Winnebago came to a final stop, Miller stood up and grabbed a crowbar. She moved over to the door and the metal steps. “Come on cowboys and cowgirls. We haven’t got much time.”
Miller opened the door and walked down the steps, her eyes searching constantly down alleys and in shadowy doorways. She wasn’t about to take any extra chances, not with their asses on the line and such a short time to pull this thing off. Satisfied, she looked back over her shoulder and gave a nod.
Rat moved to join her, quickly and without a word. She picked up the trusty shotgun, checked it for the forty-seventh time and followed Miller outside and down the steps. They were all business.
Scratch followed after Rat. Miller watched him gather himself for the mission. His grizzled grin appeared. His shoulders went back. He snapped the chamber of his Colt open, and counted the same six bullets one last time. Scratch bolted for the open door and was on the ground in one step.
Miller paused. “Lovell, if you run into any trouble honk that horn one long time. We should be able to hear you. Not too long, you don’t want to attract anything rotten. If you need us, we’ll come right back.”
The Hungry (Book 2): The Wrath of God Page 22