by Joe McKinney
He kept the struggle up, but the waxy substance hardened before he could break loose.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled. “Let me go.”
A man walked by him. Jacob saw a flash of boots, but nothing else. When he tried to look up, one of the armored men pushed his face to the floor.
“If he speaks up again, take him out of here,” one of the men said.
Jacob recognized the voice. He shook his head free until he could see across the room, and just as he suspected, he saw Lester Brooks.
Brooks seemed to know exactly what he wanted, for he crossed straight to Miriam and put a hand on her shoulder. “I am so glad you’re safe,” he said. “I was worried sick.”
Miriam didn’t seem to know what to do. “What is going on here?” she demanded. “Let him up. Why are they hurting him?”
“They’re arresting him,” Brooks said. He pointed to Kelly and Chelsea. “And these two also.”
“Arrest? Are you insane? That’s my niece.”
“I know exactly who she is. That’s why we were able to track them here.”
“But why are you arresting her?”
“For murder. She and her friends here killed seven men this morning back in Temple. The Council has issued arrest warrants for all three of them.”
Jacob let his face sink to the floor.
CHAPTER 12
“Murder?” Miriam said. “My niece is wanted for murder? I don’t believe that for a second.”
“There’s video,” Brooks said.
“Okay, well then, let’s see it.”
“It’s not going to work that way,” Brooks said. “And it’s not up for discussion. If you’d like, you can watch the video contained in the affidavit once we’re underway, but she and her friends have to come with us right now. And you do, too.”
“Me? Why? Am I wanted for murder, too?”
“No, Miriam,” Brooks said. “Please, don’t be like that.”
“You’re trying to take my niece in for murder, Les. She’s just come back into my life after seven years, and you storm in here with a goon squad and tell me you’re taking her away. How am I supposed to be, Les? Tell me, how am I supposed to be?”
Even with one of the armored goons digging a knee into his back, Jacob could tell Brooks was making an effort to treat Miriam with kid gloves. Jacob didn’t have Kelly’s aptitude for math and science, but he could read people very well, and he could see that Miriam and Brooks were an iceberg, with most of what mattered below the surface.
Chelsea stepped from behind a desk and jabbed a finger in Brooks’s chest. “We didn’t murder anybody. We were attacked! All we did was defend ourselves.”
Three of the armored men moved toward her, but Brooks put up a hand for them to stay back.
“You’re lying,” Chelsea said. “You know you are. All we did is defend ourselves. Why don’t you ask who sent those men? Huh? Why aren’t you doing that? Or is it because you already know who sent them?”
Brooks had already turned away from her, but when he heard that, he spun back around and “Excuse me?” he said. “Young lady, I don’t think I like what you’re suggesting.”
“Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have sent people to kill us.”
“Chelsea!” Miriam said. “That is enough!”
Brooks put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “Miriam, it’s okay. She’s mad, and lashing out at me because I’m the logical target here. We’ll get all this sorted out back in Temple.”
“You’re framing my father, you fucking bastard!” Chelsea said.
“Chelsea, I’m not doing anything of the sort.”
“Liar! You fucking liar!” Chelsea lashed out at him with the hardest kick she could muster. Brooks ducked to one side, but she still landed a glancing blow to his hip. “You are lying!”
Brooks backed away and motioned to his men. Three of the men moved on Chelsea. They grabbed her and pulled her back, but not before she got in one last parting kick, catching Brooks in the knee and making him stumble.
“I won’t let you destroy my daddy’s name,” she said. She was so mad spittle was flying from her mouth. “I won’t let that happen!”
“Young lady,” he said, “you need to calm yourself down right now. It’s only out of respect for your family that I’m not having you shackled.”
“Respect?” Chelsea shouted. “Respect? You dare talk about respect around me? You’re trying everything you can to ruin my daddy’s reputation. You lied about him. He didn’t cause the wreck of the Darwin. You did!”
Brooks let out a frustrated sigh. “How is that even possible? I wasn’t onboard the Darwin when it crashed,” Brooks said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Take them to the ship.”
Chelsea’s only response was to spit at Brooks, a futile gesture that didn’t even reach his shoes.
“Get them out of here,” Brooks said.
His men pulled Chelsea toward the door. One of the men came over to where Jacob was still facedown on the ground and helped his partner pull Jacob to his feet.
“Les, you can’t do this,” Miriam said.
“Miriam, we have to. They have to answer for their actions. And I have to get you out of here.”
“You’re not taking me anywhere.”
“Miriam, please, don’t be like this. We don’t have much time.”
“Time for what?”
“Have you been outside?” Brooks asked. “Have you been watching the news feed?”
“I was on the street level thirty minutes ago,” she said.
“Then you saw the zombies.”
“A few, yes. Nothing our defenses can’t handle.”
“Miriam, no. You’re about to get hit with the leading edge of the herd. The defenses in this building were never meant to handle anything like what’s coming. We have to get you out of here, and we have to do it fast. We’ve been tracking the herd and they’re already here.”
“And what if I don’t want to go?”
“Miriam, please. I came here to get you.”
“I thought you came here to arrest my niece.”
Brooks looked like he was holding on to his patience with both hands, and Jacob wondered exactly what the deal was between the two of them. In his experience, men didn’t check themselves like Brooks was doing unless the lady in question meant something special.
“I didn’t have to come here,” Brooks said.
“Well, I wish you hadn’t.”
Again, Brooks stopped himself from barking at her. “I didn’t have to come here,” he started again. “But when I heard that you were here, I knew you’d stay at your post. I’ve seen the migration projections. It’s not safe here. Please, Miriam, come with me.”
“Dr. Brooks.”
It was a man’s voice.
Jacob turned to the doorway and saw the same young man who had insulted the Arbella Code in the council meeting earlier that morning. Like the others, he was wearing black body armor, but he carried his helmet under his arm. From the look of his carefully spiked and styled sandy brown hair, it was obvious he hadn’t put the helmet on yet.
“Oh yes,” Brooks said. He turned to Miriam. “Your niece was in possession of three journals. Where are they?”
“Why do you want the journals?” Miriam asked. She’d been angry, but now her face colored with suspicion.
“They’re evidence,” Brooks said.
“A dissertation on the Triune Theory is evidence in a murder trial? Seriously? Les, what in the hell is going on here? What are you playing at?”
“We’re not playing at anything,” the young man said. “Now, where are the journals? Quickly, we don’t have time to waste.”
Miriam looked from the young man to Lester Brooks, her face simmering with rage. “You’re Jordan Anson?” she said. “I’ve heard of you. What are you doing here?”
Anson didn’t answer.
“Les, what’s going on here? Why is he here?”
“Miriam, plea
se,” Brooks said, looking like a man who’d just taken a bite of something nasty. “Where are the journals?”
Miriam crossed her arms over her chest and let out an angry huff.
Brooks said nothing, simply waited.
Finally Miriam nodded toward a workbench on the opposite side. Brooks followed her gaze, then went over to the satchel resting there. He opened it, pulled out the journals, thumbed through them, then stuffed them back inside.
Jacob watched him flip through the journals. He was about to turn his attention back to Jordan Anson when he saw Brooks pause and focus his attention on the blue light above the table. Some people made lousy poker players, and Jacob tell from Brooks’s reaction to the blue light that he was one of them. He’d seen something he didn’t like.
“You have them?” Anson said.
Brooks turned away from the table with the satchel clutched in his hand. “They’re all here.”
“Good.” Anson nodded to the men holding Jacob. “Let’s get out of here.”
They started to lead Jacob away, but as he passed Anson, Jacob shook away the hands that held him. “I remember you. You were at the Council hearing this morning. You didn’t say your name. Who are you?”
The man looked about thirty-five. From his build he obviously took care of himself. Was probably a runner, Jacob thought. He was tall and slender, even in the body armor, with a handsome, almond-shaped face and the bearing of a man long accustomed to being in charge.
The look he turned on Jacob, though, was one of abject disgust.
“Get him out of here,” he said.
The men pushed Jacob toward the door.
As they struggled to push Jacob to the door, something crashed far below them. Footfalls on the stairs and a bloodcurdling chorus of moans followed soon after.
“They’ve busted through the defenses,” Jacob said to Anson. He turned to the guard at his left and said, “Get me out of these cuffs, will you?”
“Be quiet,” the man said.
“Come on, man,” Jacob said. “Things are about to get nasty. Get me out of these cuffs.”
Anson grabbed the man to Jacob’s left and pushed him toward the door. “Check that. Make sure we have a safe way out of here.” He turned to face Brooks. “We need to leave right now.”
“Agreed,” Brooks said. “Miriam, you and your staff, come with me please.”
Miriam looked as though she was still in the mood for a fight, but at that moment the armored man at the doorway started firing down the stairs.
“They’re coming,” he yelled. “Let’s move it out!”
Jacob got pushed toward the door. The others were following along behind him. He’d made it halfway across the room when the armored man at the doorway fell back into the room beneath a wave of the undead. Several stopped to tear into the man’s armor, but most rushed past him, flooding into the room.
The guard who’d been holding Jacob in place let go of him and turned his rifle on the advancing crowd. He dropped the first three zombies to work their way through the furniture, but he was a slow and deliberate shooter. Jacob screamed at the man to move and shoot, but he stood his ground and took careful shots.
All the while the zombies flooded into the room.
Two dead men managed to make their way around the outside of the room and charged at Jacob. He saw them coming and looked around for a way to escape. With his hands secured behind his back, there was little he could to fight them off. Instead, he saw a wheeled chair at one of the desks nearest him. He maneuvered it out of the desk well, and then kicked it into the path of the charging zombie.
The zombie barely noticed it. It charged forward, hit the chair, and tumbled over the top. It ended up on the floor, on its back, unable to figure out how it got that way.
But Jacob didn’t have a chance to engage the zombie further.
The second zombie was coming around the desk, snarling and snapping like a wild animal. Jacob kicked the desk and sent it skidding into the zombie’s way. It connected with the zombie’s leg and knocked it off balance.
It was enough to give Jacob room to run.
The zombies were pouring through the doorway so fast he couldn’t even count them. He rolled over one of the desks just in time to avoid another of the zombies and landed next to one of Brooks’s men. The man was shooting just like his partners, standing his ground and taking slow, deliberate shots.
Jacob barrel-rolled over another desk just as a fresh wave of zombies closed in around him. He came up behind the man in the body armor, and in that moment he knew he wasn’t going to be a prisoner anymore.
Fuck these guys.
He kicked the man between his shoulder blades and sent him tumbling into the advancing zombie wave. They knocked him to the ground, and as he screamed, they tore through his body armor and started to dig into the flesh beneath.
Kelly, Chelsea, Miriam, and Brooks were standing near the back of the room. Jacob ran for them, planted his shoulder against Kelly’s chest, and pushed her back.
“Stu!” he yelled. “Load up the suit.”
Stu and Juliette were huddled in each other’s arms near the battle suits.
Neither moved.
Jacob lowered his shoulder and rammed Stu in the chest, pushing him back against the suit Miriam had used to rescue him.
“Grab that magazine,” he yelled. “Load that weapon. Hurry!”
Stu looked at the battle suit and shook his head. “I don’t . . .”
“Load the weapon!”
The command was enough to trip something inside of Stu. He understood. He grabbed one of the rifle magazines and jammed it into the battle suit’s built-in mini gun. Then he wrapped his arm around the suit’s arm and maneuvered it like it was a fire hose. He turned it on the advancing horde and started to fire. There was very little noise, just a continuous muffled popping sound as the mini gun leveled the zombies filtering through the room.
But even as the mini gun cleared the zombies already inside the room, Lester Brooks was forcing his way toward to the door. He pulled Miriam along with him as he shot the zombies charging him, and in that moment Jacob knew the man would leave the rest of them behind without reservation.
“Drag it with us,” Jacob said. “We have to hit the door.”
“Drag it . . . ?”
“Come on,” Jacob said. “I can’t use my hands. Pull the suit out of its cradle and let’s hit the door. Move!”
Stu and Juliette moved in perfect unison, just like Jacob hoped they would. They pulled the suit down from its rack and, while Juliette pulled it along, Stu aimed it at the zombies filing through the door.
In seconds they cut a path through the dead.
They made it to the door a moment later. Brooks and Miriam were already heading up the stairs. Jordan Anson was already a level above them. He met Jacob’s gaze with a fuck you stare that left little room for interpretation.
Jacob returned the look. Beside him, Stu, Juliette, Kelly, and Chelsea all filed through the door. Jacob kept pace right behind them as they all made their way to the roof access.
He hit the roof access doorway right behind Kelly. Night had fallen since they’d been in Miriam’s office, and the hot, dry desert air hit his throat like an electrical shock.
Ahead of him was the shuttle Dr. Brooks and his team had flown in on.
The zombies had been gaining on them while they were on the stairs, and now they flooded through the doorway. With his hands behind his back, Jacob was almost defenseless. He met the first zombie through the door with a hard kick to the chest, knocking it down, but he was unable to twist and dodge the one right behind it. The zombie lunged and managed to wrap its fingers into Jacob’s shirt. Jacob backpedaled as fast as he could, twisting one way and then the other in an attempt to shake the zombie loose, but it didn’t work. The thing held tight, even though it lost its balance and sank to its knees.
The weight pulled Jacob down and he felt himself losing the struggle to stay upright. He k
new if he fell he’d die right there. They would swarm him and devour him in seconds.
The zombie was struggling, trying to pull Jacob toward its reeking mouth. Jacob did the only thing he could and head-butted the zombie, knocking it backward hard enough to dislodge its fingers from his shirt.
The zombie fell into the wall at the edge of the roof, and Jacob ran at him. He lowered his shoulder and hit the zombie square in the chest, knocking him back again so that the dead man went over the side, tumbling to his second death.
Three more, then eight more, then fifteen came surging through the door.
He started to backpedal again, only this time it wasn’t a zombie that slowed him down. Lester Brooks was right behind him. He grabbed Jacob by the shoulder and pulled him out of the way. Then he stepped into the spot where Jacob had just stood, leveled his pistol at the crowd of snarling dead surging out of the doorway, and started firing.
The three closest to him sank silently to the ground, their heads ruptured by the compressed air and leaking down their backs. Brooks ignored them. More were coming up the stairs every second.
Jacob had been taught to shoot a handgun with two hands. Feet together, shoulder-width apart, both hands on the weapon straight out in front the chest, so that the body formed a triangle.
But Brooks fired one-handed. He had his shoulders bladed toward the onrushing zombies, weapon in the right hand, extended toward the target.
Jacob had been taught that the accuracy of a two-handed stance was far better than that of a single-handed stance, and he’d known older shooters back in Arbella who insisted on using just one hand. They never shot as well as those who used the two-handed Weaver stance, like Jacob.
Brooks didn’t seem to have any trouble with accuracy, though. He scored one head shot after another, and didn’t miss once.
“Get to the shuttle!” Brooks said to him. “Move. I’ll cover you.”
Jacob didn’t have to be told twice. He ran for the shuttle. It was a hulking aircraft shaped like a wedge, with thick, stubby wings sloping off the aircraft’s spine like a man’s shoulders. Underneath each wing was a fat, roaring engine, and even as he sprinted for the open doorway near the front of the shuttle, Jacob got the sense that this airship, even more so than the freighter upon which he’d hitched a ride earlier that day, was built for power and speed. The doorway that led inside was standing open. Kelly and Chelsea had just slipped inside. Jordan Anson was in the doorway, waving at Lester Brooks to hurry.