Her sudden action did appear to startle the NIS agent, but not for very long.
She wanted to close the gate on him, but the diversion didn't work. He was only twenty feet from her. They both seemed to size up the situation and came to wildly opposite conclusions.
Short Guy charged her.
Victoria steadied herself, then pulled the trigger several times as fast as she could.
The sound from the gun reminded her of the guns she'd used with Liam, back in the early days. The little pistols they'd used had .22 caliber ammunition, which was easy to carry in big bricks, but required precise aim to do any good against zombies.
Round after round went into Short Guy's chest, but he marched on with a wicked smile on his face.
Is this a BB gun?
He was very close when she lifted the gun and aimed for his head. BB gun or not, it should hurt anyone to get shot in the face.
She got off one final shot before he was on top of her. He yelled loudly as he grasped her and pulled her to the floor. The gun, useless though it was, clattered away loudly in the empty tunnel.
Short Guy was in pain. His voice was labored, and the epitome of angry.
“I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do,” he shouted, almost in her ear.
His grip was vise-like. In moments he had her pinned to the ground, though he struggled to right himself on top of her. He seemed to pause to catch his breath while he lay heavily over her chest.
He giggled maniacally.
“Maybe I'll make you pay twice,” he said with a raspy whisper. His hand searched her waist. Its intent was obvious.
She squirmed desperately against him. Afraid of what she would see in his eyes when he finally had her in a helpless position. What that hand signified.
The gun was far away. She'd lost the screwdriver. She'd—
The screwdriver!
Maybe he kept it? It was the sort of thing someone would do if they wanted revenge. And these guys were all about revenge...
Short Guy continued to struggle while lying flat on her chest. She continued to resist, but fought him with her arms...she struck him on his hip and tried to hit his back. She managed to land a terribly weak blow on something solid.
“Enough of this,” he said madly.
Victoria had her head turned away from him, while she struggled to reach for his last weapon. She didn't see the strike coming. Short Guy banged his head against hers, which was a double hit because hers was already on the hard floor.
Her vision blurred as he finally got the energy he needed to push himself up to straddle her properly. Between the pain in her head and the tears welling in her eyes, she could barely see him. He was a specter hovering above her.
Though loathe to admit it, she was dreadfully scared. He'd gained the leverage needed. It was the signal her death was on the way...and whatever else he was going to do to her prior to that. Her strength flagged.
She closed her eyes for a long few seconds to clear them. When she opened them, she screamed in horror.
“What? Never seen a guy with no eyes?” he cackled. “Oh, you're gonna pay. Once for each eye.”
She pushed back with all her remaining strength, grasping at his backside.
Then she let her head fall back to the concrete. She was spent.
“She said you were fighters. You and that doofus and his Grandma. But you're just stupid kids. Stupid f—”
She tensed up and plunged the screwdriver into Short Guy's left ear with everything she had. When she didn't think it would go in any further, she pushed some more.
Short guy leaned away at first, but seemed to pause. Almost like he waited to see if that was the best she had. Like he did when he didn't care that she shot him multiple times.
She panicked, and let go of a deep sob.
It's not working!
She wondered if she'd missed his brain and only wounded him. There was no hope of surprising him a second time.
But Short Guy was definitely hurt.
“Oh.” A long pause. “Oh. Oww.”
He fell to her chest again. She might end up dying from being smothered…
He spoke into her armpit. “You don't have a chance, you know. None of you do. If it ain't these zombies, it will be others. We've planned this to the last body, and you have no idea where the zombies are coming from.”
Thinking back to the red dressed zombie, and her strange reaction at their meeting, Victoria had more than enough research in her pocket to respond.
“No, Mr. Short Guy, I know exactly where the zombies are coming from.”
She banged on the screwdriver handle, but there was no reaction from the body. He was gone.
The only good thing the man had done in the short, miserable time she'd known him was to not turn into a zombie. A bullet to the eye and a screwdriver to the ear made sure of that.
When the dead man rose up from her chest, it took her a few seconds to recognize that Hayes had come down from his refuge, after all. He pulled the guy off.
“We have to close this gate. They're about to burn the building,” he said as if he were reading a weather report.
“You saw me on the camera?” she asked dreamily.
“Yep, that's how I knew to come down here.”
That's great, but not why I asked. Not at all.
Chapter 9: Mile 444
Hayes had to help Victoria through the tunnel and out into the sunlight of the morning. The shock of the assault was bad enough, but the realization she may be infected sent her onto psychological thin ice. Her mind raced as her body ached.
I must get out of here. Run away.
The few students she’d seen, plus the men and women at the barricade, were a small glimpse of the total number of survivors within the killing range of a single zombie. Just one was all it would take to wipe everyone off the map. Unable to know for sure if what she’d seen down in the tunnel was the result of her truly being infected, or was simply another strange behavior of the zombie horde, she fell back on her long history of hypochondria. Now that the suggestion was in her head, she was convinced she was infected.
The sting of daylight didn’t brighten her mood.
“You all right? Did you get bitten?” Hayes had released her now that they were outside, and somewhat safe, but he seemed to study the blood over her shirt and pants—likely looking for bites.
She huffed. “I’m fine.” Then, with more grace. “He caught me off guard. I guess I got startled.”
Hayes stood next to her. “Well, you should be scared. That man was part of an NIS hit team, no doubt about it. They all dress like there’s only one color of clothing.” He handed her the black rifle she'd dropped.
She didn’t want to admit it, but Hayes probably saved her life. After getting her to her feet, he helped close and lock the gate in the tunnel. He assured her none of the zombies escaped the building, and in fact all of them were at the front windows of all three floors watching a growing throng of students—and security people from the barricade—as they attempted to start a fire.
They soon watched the action in real time. Sparks and his crew had filled some kind of push cart, and it was burning wildly.
“They’ll torch the whole place. Zombie problem solved,” he said evenly.
“It’ll ruin all your research...”
She was conflicted into silence. On the one hand, the research Hayes had done there was incredible, and could lead to a cure. On the other, clearing the building would be dangerous, and the risk of one of them getting out would only increase if security teams went in looking for trouble.
The NIS had done their job too well.
“The man I killed. The shorter guy. Do you know what he was doing in that lower level before I arrived?”
Surely he wasn’t waiting just for me.
Or, she thought, that was exactly what someone like him would do. He guessed that’s where she would go next. Did he know Hayes was locked up there?
Suddenly
the conspiracy launched into an infinite regression. Hayes was in on it. He communicated with Short Guy, and they were working together to bring her back so they could take care of her, and the zombies, in one fell swoop.
Then she remembered that if she was infected—a modern day Typhoid Victoria—she should be put down. Maybe they were trying to do her a favor…
“Hello? You in there?”
Victoria came back. “Oh, I’m—sorry, what?”
“Do you want to watch these guys torch the place, or can we move on?”
The guys from the barricade weren’t that far away.
“I need to go tell them thanks. They saved both our lives.”
“OK. I’ll wait over there,” he pointed to the far end of the parking lot, which was the edge of campus and the beginnings of Forest Park.
He walked off, leaving her alone in the first rays of sunshine coming in through the tall, stately trees of the campus. She tried to gather her wits as she neared Sparks. The smell of burning paper was on the air.
“Hey, there she is!” Sparks said with gusto. “Perfect timing. You were short and sweet. So were we.” He pointed to the cart filled with flames. They’d filled it with books.
“Yeah, I, uh, wanted to tell you I got the man I was looking for. And I—”
She wanted to say she killed the assassin, but it sounded ridiculous. Like she was some kind of counter-terrorist soldier—which was pretty much the furthest thing from the truth.
“—found the guy who shot your people. He was attacked by a zombie.”
Despite the gray lie, the story sounded plausible and served the same purpose, in the end.
“Ah, that’s good news. We’ll burn his body with all the others.”
She pawed the rifle strap over her shoulder, and brought it around to her front. “Do you want this back? I fired it at that hitman, but he laughed when I shot him.”
“No, keep it.” He got close enough to look it over. “That's chambered in point-22 caliber.” He laughed. “It looks bad ass, but it won't do much good against Kevlar or the undead. But it's all I can give you.”
She sighed. Short Guy's gun was lying somewhere in the tunnel...though she was pretty sure it was now on the wrong side of the gate.
“Thanks,” she said as she pushed it to her back again.
“I have to go,” she continued. “I need to find my boyfriend, and get my scientist friend another lab,” she pointed to the one they were about to destroy.
“Lots of space on this campus. You’ll have no problem on that score.”
She was sure he was right, though he couldn’t know the NIS was already here looking for Hayes. No matter what building he wanted to use for his research, they’d not let him do it.
Maybe I could do it myself? I could cure myself.
Her spirits sunk at the recollection she’d momentarily forgotten about that. It would be empowering to think she could research the plague and cure herself and everyone else...but this was reality. She was an amateur bedpan changer, not a medical professional. She needed Hayes, just as much as he apparently needed her.
She wondered if he would have ever come out of his security room if she’d not found rescue. In another universe she would have been killed by Short Guy, or red dress girl, then she herself could have ended up killing Hayes at some point inside that building.
Focus on the now, girl. You kept him alive. Go find Liam.
2
Hayes watched her approach.
“You bounce back quick,” he said with a smile.
“So do you. Did you realize you’d have died if I hadn’t found help? Short Guy was about to close the gate on you. I don’t think anyone would have found you if the zombies had gotten out from that building.”
“That short guy, as you call him, probably had more years of training in the art of killing than you've been alive. You're one tough chick, I'll give you that.”
They walked along the road that would take them by the park, the row of mansions, or to the hospitals on the opposite end of Forest Park. She tried to think of the best place to go next, knowing there were people who wanted her dead lurking about.
The park would take her to Doctor Yu.
The hospitals might lead her to someone in charge. Someone who could protect her.
The mansions—Hans' home was there. That's where she figured she'd see Liam if he returned from his task for the old man.
“Liam would freak out if he saw you and me together.”
“Is he the jealous type?” he said with his old egotistical charm.
“No. Well, I don't know. No!” she sputtered. “I'm talking about you being a crazy researcher who shoots little girls and kidnaps grandparents. That guy.”
He let her accusations go.
“He has to know what I'm doing. You have to tell him.”
She looked at him, rising to the challenge.
“He and I spent time in a deep mine not far from here. We saw bodies pulled from caskets—dead bodies—that became animated zombies. Care to comment?”
They walked in silence for a long time. She figured she'd finally cornered him on something important. Her ace card was that she and Liam had gotten a hold of Colonel McMurphy's secret videos showing his discoveries of the place, but that wasn't her secret to reveal. Not to Hayes.
“How did you guys get down there?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose not.” He laughed in a guarded fashion. “I'm going to take a guess here and say that someone knows you've been down there. Someone in the NIS?”
She searched her memories. They had no encounters with the NIS while in the mine. At least, no one advertised themselves as such. The three men who claimed to be Polar Bears were left behind in the tank room. They knew. Whoever communicated over the computer link knew. The three missing girls knew. Lots of people knew.
“Uh huh. I'll take it by your silence that it wasn't a complete secret.”
Hayes walked to stand under one of the large trees that lined the avenue. He looked around like he was about to share a secret, then spoke in a low voice. “The Mile 444 Project isn't something I was involved in directly, but I knew about it because of its implications for finding a cure. If you could reanimate the dead, imagine what you could do for the sick, right?”
He rubbed his hands like he was cold. “Before the sirens, a discovery was made out in Colorado. Something that suggested the disease circling the planet was more than we were led to believe. We later came to understand it changes to meet the unique characteristics of localities where it spreads. Thus, Chicago zombies have a version of the disease that is very different from those in Colorado. A sick person in Utah is going to be unrecognizable to a zombie in Uganda. It isn't surprising, given local foods, local customs, minerals in the drinking water, and so forth. But what really surprised us is that the disease could affect dead flesh and bones.”
With a nod, his voice became a whisper. “The service men and women they dug up down there were supposed to be used for testing, but once the NIS mission changed from causing the infection to making it as bad as possible, they started to dig up more and more bodies. What they did with them, I have no idea.”
“There are hundreds of them down in that mine.”
“Then you need to stay far away.”
“Oh, I'm never going back down there. Don't you worry.”
With a little less discretion, Hayes spoke louder. “I had nothing to do with all that, though I wish I could get my hands on some of that reanimated blood. It might give us further clues in how the disease is spreading, and how it stays virulent in decaying bodies.”
“Good luck with that,” she said as she began walking once more.
Hayes jogged a few paces to catch up. “You know, I could use your help. I need to find a new lab, but I'll need help when I get there. It's just me, now. You could be a real asset.”
She'd come full circle. Her whole purpose—most of her purpose—of staying behind
was to see if she help Doctor Yu and others with the effort to formulate a cure. When they'd arrived, and given Yu and her boss new information about what they'd learned on their journey, she thought for sure that was the beginning of the end. The time when real scientists and doctors got to work to solve the whole thing.
But the truth was much different. The research on the cure was being done by the one man she'd hoped never to see again. To her chagrin, he'd made real discoveries. He'd given everyone a legitimate lead toward a final cure.
She had to trust him to continue that research, in the open. If he made off to a secret base again, he might find the cure, but who knows how he'd use it when the time came to share it with the world. Her trust issues wouldn't let her ignore the possibilities.
“There's a house, just up ahead, where we might find Liam.”
The first step, once again, was to find her partner. She wanted to have multiple eyes on Hayes, and together the two of them could ensure Doctor Cure didn't run off again.
She also admitted the need to stay close to the one man who might be able to cure her own infection.
3
Hayes walked the street with a type of giddiness.
“Why the heck are you so happy?”
“Oh, it feels good to be partnered with someone again. You have no idea—well, you have some idea—what it's like to get on the NIS's bad side.”
“Yeah, they put your whole family on a kill list, isn't that right?” They both knew of the existence of the secret list of Liam's family members. All of whom had been designated as enemies of the state.
“True. But now that world is dead, my own family's chances are about the same as everyone else's. Even though I'm technically a traitor to the cause, the odds of them finding my entire family and terminating them is very low. Some of them are already fighting back.”
Victoria sighed. “I don't understand you people at all. You fight. You connive. You betray.”
“Just like every other group of humans on the planet. For all their bravado and careful planning, they couldn't factor out human nature. Sometimes people do the exact opposite of what you and I think they should. Even on super secret committees and hit teams. But make no mistake. There are true believers. They would sell out their own children to protect the cause.”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 158