by JJ Zep
“What I’d like to know, General, is how launching and attack against unarmed civilians with bulldozers and flamethrowers helps anyone? I know Colonel Duma and he’s not an unreasonable man. Why not send an envoy? Make him an offer, listen to what he has to say.”
Harrow was smiling now, a patronizing smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “And I suppose, Major, that you would volunteer to be that envoy?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes, I’ll do it.”
Harrow let out a humorless chuckle, one that his sycophants around the table joined in with.
“And while you’re holding hands with Jake Duma and whispering sweet nothings in his ear, I don’t suppose you’d have the time to drop him a few hints as to what we’re planning.”
“If I were there as a representative of the Pendragon Corporation, that would constitute an act of treason,” Jojo said.
Harrow regarded him with arms folded across his chest, then brought up his hand to his chin and stood there like Rodin’s thinker. For what felt like a full minute he contemplated his response. Then a smile appeared on his face, a manic grin that Jojo didn’t care for at all.
“So what you’re saying,” Harrow said, “is that, if this conversation with Jake Duma happened off the record, you might be inclined to warn him of our intentions?”
Jojo knew immediately where Harrow was going with this line of questioning, knew immediately that he’d walked into a trap. There was no way to answer that would keep him out of trouble. If he said no, Harrow would call him out as a liar. If he said yes, he’d be guilty of treason, or at least, treasonous intent. Harrow had him either way.
“If I thought it would save lives, if I thought it would save women and children being crushed under the tracks of bulldozers and burnt alive, then yes. I’d tell him.”
“Fucking traitor,” Grunewald spat from the other side of the table.
Harrow stilled him with a hand. His face was now grave, mournful.
“You disappoint me, Jojo. I always thought your brother was the fuck up in the family. Seems that ill discipline and disloyalty are Collins family traits.”
“Colonel Grunewald,” he said, his eyes never leaving Jojo.
“Sir?”
“Call out a detachment of guards and have them escort Major Collins to the Pendleton Hilton.”
“Yes sir.”
“Oh, and don’t bother booking him in, a holding cell will do. Once we conclude our business with Duma tomorrow, we’ll be putting Major Collins here in front of a firing squad.”
seventeen
“Steady there, feller.”
Charlie kept his finger on the trigger of the carbine slung over his shoulder. He raised a hand, indicating for the man to stop. The man seemed confused, disorientated, eyes bulging from his sockets as he jerked his head left to right, from Charlie to Wackjob and back again. The wound on his neck looked horrendous, a number of deep gashes that must have severed something important. How was it that he was still alive?
“Sir? You been bit, sir?” Wackjob said. His carbine was pressed to his shoulder, keeping the man in his sights.
The man opened his mouth as though trying to say something, emitted no more than a grunt. He shook his head in a vigorous movement that sent a swarm of black flies into flight from his neck wound.
“You ain’t been bit?” Wackjob said.
Again the man shook his head, regarded them with large, sorrowful eyes.
“I’m calling bullshit on that,” Wackjob said. “I say this guy’s a fucking Z. I say we drop him.”
No, the man mouthed. Not Z. Hurt. He brought his hands together in a pitiful praying gesture. Help me. Please.
“Hold on, Wackjob,” Charlie said. His mind was racing. The man quite obviously understood what they’d said, had even mouthed a response. That meant he wasn’t a zombie, at least not any kind of zombie Charlie had ever encountered. But that neck wound bothered him. How had he survived that, out here in the middle of nowhere, without medical attention?
Perhaps the cut isn’t as deep as it seems, he thought, then immediately dismissed that idea. It had been deep enough, obviously, to sever the man’s vocal chords, hence his inability to talk. It was plenty deep enough.
So what to do about the situation? Wackjob was probably right. They should put the guy down, put an end to his suffering. Why take the risk when he might have been bitten.
But Charlie knew instinctively that he couldn’t do that, couldn’t gun down an unarmed man, especially one who was so obviously hurt.
The man tottered on his feet, fell against one of the vehicles and slid until his butt thumped against the tarmac.
Wackjob continued covering him with the rifle. “Just say the word boss,” he said.
“Hold fire,” Charlie commanded. He reached for the canteen clipped to his belt, crossed the tarmac and crouched beside the man who now sat slumped, his chest rising and falling in barely perceptible breaths. Charlie unscrewed the lid of his canteen, placed his fingers under the man’s chin and brought the canteen to the man’s lips. Wackjob scuttled across clearing a line of fire.
“Get a couple of men in that apartment block and find a bed frame or something else we can use as a stretcher,” Charlie said.
“You taking the sum bitch back to the base?”
Charlie thought about that for a moment. “Not to the school, no. We aren’t equipped to deal with something like this. We’ll take him up to Morales, see if they’ll put him up in that infirmary of theirs.”
“You do realize he’s probably going to die anyway?”
“That may be,” Charlie said. “But he’s not going to die on the side of the road because we decided not to help him.”
He tilted the canteen and trickled some water over the man’s cracked lips. He just hoped that he was doing the right thing.
eighteen
The thumping on the door brought Ruby to her feet. She looked quickly over to the bed where Pearl’s mass of blond hair was just visible under the covers. Still sleeping. Good. Ruby didn’t want the kid to wake now. Not when she was enjoying her first nightmare free sleep in over a week.
Ruby got quickly to her feet and crossed the cabin, her footfalls muted by the thick carpet. “Yeah, what is it?” she said speaking through the door.
“Ten minute warning,” Vanessa’s voice said from the other side. Vanessa was Cain’s ‘Talent Coordinator.’
Ruby looked back towards the bed. “I need a babysitter,” she said.
“Anyone in particular?”
“That girl Sharon you sent down yesterday. She’ll do.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Vanessa said. “I’m not sure if she’s on call.”
Ruby heard footsteps retreating down the corridor. She backed away and walked towards the bed, eased onto it. She drew the covers away from Pearl’s face, saw the frown etched on the little girl’s features, even in sleep.
Ruby had been aboard the Calypso Quest for eight days now, eight days during which she’d been Pearl’s guardian. Cain had intended this as a means of controlling Ruby, but over the week Ruby had developed a genuine affection for the kid. She’d cleaned the little girl up, attended to her various cuts, bruises and abrasions, gotten her some new clothes. But the trauma that Pearl had suffered ran much deeper than that, and while she refused to speak about it, Ruby had heard her cry out in her sleep for “mommy” and “daddy” and “Christy.” She’d been there in the night when Pearl had woken up screaming. It had filled Ruby with rage at Cyrus Cain, made her more determined than ever to escape.
Leaving without Pearl was, of course, out of the question. Cain had already made it clear what he’d do if that happened. Pearl would become the star attraction in one of his “Saturday Spectaculars,” he’d said. He’d dangle her over his zombie pit and allow the Z’s to eat her alive, from the toes up. No, when Ruby escaped she was taking Pearl with her.
But that was easier said than done. She reached under the sheets and traced her hand
along the uneven surface of the band Pearl wore on her wrist. Now she shifted the covers aside to get a look at it. The bracelet was about two inches wide, about one eight of an inch thick. It looked expensive, platinum or white gold studded with bluish gemstones. The clasp, though brazed, was flimsy. Ruby could easily snap it.
But that, according to Cyrus Cain, would be a mistake. “That pretty little trinket there’s packed with enough plastique to turn little Pearl into Pearl jam,” he’d sniggered. “You try to pry it off and, kaboom! You try to leave the cabin with little Pearl wearing it and, kaboom! All else fails, I can detonate it remotely. Kaboom!” Ruby didn’t know if any of that was true, but she wouldn’t put it past Cain. She couldn’t take the risk.
And so, with a simple device, which might be no more than a lump of polished metal, Cain had her under his complete control.
A knock at the door drew her attention. “Yeah,” Ruby said.
“I’ve got Sharon for you.”
Ruby opened the door a crack and peered out. Vanessa was standing in the corridor, Sharon slightly behind, mouth working at a piece of gum. Sharon was dressed for work on the ‘Royal Promenade,’ short red skirt, low-cut black blouse, red hair piled high, enough make-up on her face to give the Calypso Quest a new coat of paint.
“Hey Rube,” Sharon said as Ruby slid the door open.
“Five minutes,” Vanessa said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ruby said. She looked past Vanessa and spoke to Sharon. “She’s asleep, so don’t wake her, okay.”
“Sure thing. I still get my normal rate, right?”
“Time and a half,” Ruby said, drawing a scowl from Vanessa. She stood aside and allowed Sharon to slip past her into the cabin. Then she pulled the door shut behind her, locked it and slipped the key into a pocket on her sleeve. She set off after Vanessa who was already retreating along the corridor. From a way off, Ruby heard the muted roar of the crowd. Sounded like another full house. She wondered what perversion Cain had planned for her today.
nineteen
“Now entering the arena, ladies and gentlemen, Ruby Collins!”
Ruby heard the announcer’s booming voice and the roar of the crowd that followed in its wake. She waited a while longer in the elevator until Vanessa gave her the nod. Then she stepped out onto the deck, hand outstretched to receive her Katana from one of the guards. The engraved ivory handle felt good in her grip and the murmur of steel as she unsheathed the weapon was music to her ears. She swatted at the air in a couple of agricultural swipes, ignoring Cain’s directive that she ‘show the crowd her moves.’ Then she walked slowly towards the arena on the upper deck.
It was another hot and windless day in Galveston, the sun baking down from out of a cobalt sky. Ruby took her time, striding as languidly as a panther, her lithe body tightly encased in a suit of black leather. Left and right of her, the crowd for today’s show packed the decks of the two liners flanking the Calypso Quest. The VIP guests were closer at hand. They, Ruby knew, would be seated in the suites on decks 15 to 18, towering over the arena like a luxury apartment block at her back. Ahead of her were the sports courts, the mini-golf course with a few flags still fluttering; the wave pool, empty but for a few inches of slimy green bilge, its tangle of waterslides mostly collapsed; the climbing wall still trailing a few harnesses; the pebble-blasted running path. At the far end, rising 30 feet above the deck, was a futuristic structure that had once housed a restaurant. On its glass-fronted patio, surrounded by his closest flunkies, sat Cyrus Cain, like Caesar overseeing the gladiatorial games. According to the instructions she’d been given, Ruby was to stop in front of Cain’s perch and acknowledge him. Instead, she got to work adjusting the belt on the Katana’s sheath, then slinging it over her back.
The last contest appeared to have been a particularly bloody one. Even as Ruby waited, an army of maintenance staff was washing down the deck, dragging Z bodies to the side and hurling them overboard. There were also a number of dead animals including a giraffe and a hyena. Ruby had no idea where Cain found such exotic creatures, but he appeared particularly fond of pitting Z’s against wild animals. Invariably, by sheer weight of numbers, the zombies won.
A blast of calliope music signaled that Ruby’s segment of the show was about to start.
“Ready Ruby?” the announcer asked as a cheer went up from the crowd and morphed into a chant.
“Ruby! Ruby! Ruby!”
Ruby turned towards the four-story tower that housed the upper decks. The Z’s would be released from a holding pen behind the tower, usually in ones and twos gradually building up to a massed battle. Sometimes, Cain would throw in a little surprise. Last time out he’d released thousands of rats onto the deck in the midst of proceedings. On another occasion it had been snakes.
Ruby withdrew her sword and held it in front of her, two-handed. She focused her attention on the spot where the running path disappeared behind the tower. A minute ticked by slowly. Straining her hearing, Rudy picked up the slap of water against the bow of the ship, the babble of the crowd, the creaking of the deck. Underlying it all, she could make out the buzz of the Z’s, like an arcing electrical light. She could smell them too, although their scent was muted by the equally unpleasant blend of sewage and stagnant water, carried on the breeze. A bead of sweat formed on Ruby’s forehead, trickled down the side of her face. The crowd had fallen silent.
A shadow appeared on the path, elongated by the backlight into a bizarre alien form. Ruby adjusted her grip on the sword as the zombie appeared on the running track. He was a tall man, carrying no obvious signs of physical damage, the uniform he wore suggesting that he’d been, until recently, a member of the Galveston PD. Now another of the creatures appeared, this one an obese green-skinned woman, her massive breasts exposed, rolls of fat cascading out from her waist, her arms and legs trunk-like. A third Z hovered behind the woman, a lanky teenager dressed in black jeans and a Megadeth t-shirt, all arms and legs, a mop of jet-black hair, a skuzz of beard on his jowls, half of his face pulped by what looked like a shotgun blast.
“A bit of a mixed bag today folks,” the presenter chuckled. “Let’s see how Ruby copes.”
The zombie cop scanned along the deck and spotted Ruby. He inclined his chin and made a clucking noise with its tongue, drawing the attention of the others. The woman immediately split left, the youth right. They began advancing on Ruby, moving in an odd tiptoed posture, their movements erratic.
“Great,” Ruby muttered. “Quick Z’s.”
twenty
By the time they reached the Morales compound it was midday and Charlie was amazed that the man they’d rescued was still alive. The guard at the gate regarded their patient suspiciously, but after a quick radio conversation with Morales, he ushered them through. Charlie then directed his men towards the largest of the compound buildings. They were halfway across the yard when Morales stepped through the door.
“This one of your men?” Morales said, as they approached.
Charlie shook his head. “Civilian,” he said. “Found him wandering along I-8. Looks like someone tried to hack through his throat.”
Morales raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “It was a blade not a bite. We checked.”
This time Morales inspected the wound himself, whistled through his teeth and gave Charlie a look that suggested he’d wasted his time bringing the man here. To his credit, he didn’t voice that opinion.
Morales spoke in rapid Spanish to the guard who had escorted them in. Then he turned to Charlie. “Pablito will fetch the nurse,” he said. “Come. Follow me.”
He set off down the corridor and stopped in front of the infirmary, holding the door open as Charlie’s men manhandled the makeshift stretcher through the gap and placed it gently on the floor. Charlie peered into the room and saw the other occupant, tucked up in bed, unmoving. His pulse suddenly stepped up a gear.
He’d stopped in on the girl a couple of times during the week that she’d be
en here. Each time he’d experienced the same sensations, a quickening of the pulse, a flush to his cheeks, an odd breathlessness. He was like a schoolboy with a crush, he realized. That was crazy. He knew nothing about the woman.
He looked down at her, saw that her cuts were healing, her bruises fading to shades of jaundice yellow. She was beautiful though, fine featured with high cheekbones, full lips and a nose that Charlie thought was just about perfect. What color were her eyes? Green or blue given her complexion. Green, he decided, I bet they’re green. His eyes drifted to the unique trio of tiny moles decorating her right cheek. Far from a blemish they only added to her allure. She seemed so fragile, so small and vulnerable. He felt an almost overwhelming need to protect her.
“Who’s the babe?” Wackjob said from beside him.
“She came into town last week,” Charlie said. “No one knows who she is or where she’s from.” He turned to Morales. “She hasn’t spoken yet?”
Morales shook his head sadly. “She asked once about the boy. Since then, nothing.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“And?”
“She cried for a time. Then she closed her eyes and hasn’t spoken or eaten since.”
“How long?”
“Three days.”
The nurse scurried in, shooed Charlie’s men from the room and then knelt down on the floor beside the injured man. She placed a hand on the man’s chin and angled his head so that she could view the throat wound, made a clucking noise as she inspected the damage. Then she placed a hand on his forehead and then felt for a pulse at his throat and wrist. Finally, she positioned her ear to his chest and held it there, concern growing on her face.
She rattled off something in Spanish to Morales who translated. “This man was alive when you found him?”