Glancing at the weirdoes who talked in hush tones, I said a silent good riddance to them and their freaky formality. Evelyn was casting Lawson discreet looks every now and again, but he completely ignored her. The longing in her sad gaze was clearly evident, she liked him. But he liked me. I smiled, all smug-like. Suck on that, bitch. Dennis was absent from dinner tonight, but it wasn’t unusual. Four guards always remained on patrol at all times, so he’d be out watching the perimeter of Silverleaf. I’d only seen him from afar since our talk a little over twenty-four hours ago. We were leaving tonight, and we were still waiting to see if he would come through with a key to one of the vehicles. If he didn’t, Lawson and I decided we’d leave on foot and keep to the outskirts of Phoenix. It would add days to our trip, but it was safer than heading right into Phoenix where the infected population was largest.
Looking down the table, I found the self-righteous Dr. Dick staring at me. His eyes were lit with a spark I didn’t really understand. Excitement perhaps, but not that cute Christmas morning kind of excitement, it was too manic and wild. Not one to back down from crazies, I refilled by wine glass and stared right back. His face began to blur, and I blinked a few times to clear my vision. Everything came sharp again, but it didn’t say that way long. The room around me was fuzzy, my mind feeling weightless. How much wine had I drunk? When my head began to spin, I squeezed my eyes shut before opening them again, wondering if I literally had eaten myself into a food coma. When the spinning didn’t stop, I tried finding something to focus on and push down the sick feeling that was slowly bleeding into my body. Hell, I felt like I’d taken a bad trip. Blinking away the invading fog did no good, and turning to look at Noah, I realized her head was dipping forward, her eyes closed. My heart took that moment to begin hammering and as I reached out to grip the table and stop myself from falling to the floor, I missed the edge, sending my plate and wine glass tumbling to the ground.
Lawson gave me a what the fuck look, his eyes blinking hard and slowly as if he too was trying to blink away a blur. Then his face morphed into a mixture of fear and fury. Looking past me he tried to stand, his body uncoordinated and clumsy. He was moving around me, his feet fighting for purchase. Noah’s head bounced up, and she tried desperately to focus, her glasses slipping down her nose before she seemed to fall asleep where she sat. Tumbling from my chair, my weak arms caught my descent before I face planted it on the stone floor, and I somehow managed to drag myself to Noah and awkwardly wrap my arms around her. Desperation clawed at my senses which were floating into an unknown abyss. We’d been drugged. Panic only made my blood pump faster, therefore making the drugs take affect quicker.
“Lawson,” I mumbled, my lips feeling numb, my tongue too big for my mouth. With my arms around Noah’s waist, my head collapsed into her lap.
The noise of glass shattering seemed to vibrate through the air before my eyes fell shut and darkness stole me away.
***
Floating into consciousness, I winced with the onslaught of pain in my head. Fuck, that hurt. My thoughts were foggy and disjointed as I tried to make sense of my world. Where was I? I’d obviously had a bender the night before. Which city were we in? The more I tried to reach for those memories, the harder they seemed to find. When a decaying body dripping with blood and covered in web like purple veins flashed through my thoughts, my eyes sprang open. Gloomy darkness greeted me, and I blinked a few times before finally allowing my throbbing head to fall to one side. Surrounded by shadows, I found it difficult to make out where I was, but gradually more memories filled my head, and I knew it had to be somewhere within club Silverleaf. Opening my mouth to speak, little more than a rusty groan came out. Smacking my lips together, I felt the cracked dry surface and winced. It felt like I’d been on a weeklong bender and hadn’t brushed my teeth once. With a long, suffering groan, I sat up and clutched my head.
“The fuck did you give me Dr. Dick?” I managed to mumble.
“Finally, I was beginning to worry my dosage had been wrong, and I’m never wrong.”
The doctor’s voice echoed off the stone walls. Glancing down my body, I found myself still wearing the stupid silver cocktail dress, my heavy black boots on my feet. Pushing myself up from the ground, I finally took a good look at my surroundings and discovered I was in some sort of a cage. Before I had time to examine my prison, my gaze caught Noah curled on her side a few feet from me. My stomach flipped with unease as I crawled up alongside her. She looked so still, too still. Panic almost stole my sanity before I realized her chest was rising and falling. Alive. The knowledge instantly calmed any hysteria I was about to be dragged into. That wave of calm was lost when a familiar, rotting scent filled my lungs. A loud and ferocious scream bounced off the stone walls surrounding me. I knew that sound, and the accompanying scent of decay sent me falling protectively over Noah. The zombie raced across the cell beside ours, her arms sliding through the long bars and reaching for us as spittle sprayed from her mouth. Automatically I covered my mouth and nose, my entire body trembling so bad I would have fallen to my knees if I weren’t already on them. The infected was a young woman, her hair a matted mess of blood and god knows what else. Crusted blood stained her eye sockets, nose and mouth, the familiar hemorrhaged veins just under skin webbing her flesh. She was dressed in a ratty looking thigh-length shirt and nothing else, and she was clearly hungry to eat my fuckin’ brains as she growled and continued to try and push her body through the wall of my cage.
“Holy shit!” I spat out, only rising to my feet when I realized the zombie couldn’t get to us.
The cage we were in would have been little bigger than thirteen feet by thirteen feet and had two doors, one directly in front of me, and one to my right which separated us from the infected. Another cage stood on the opposite side of the girl’s cage, also with two doors like mine. A figure lay prone on the stone floor in the shadows. I couldn’t make out who it was, but my gut told me it was Lawson. Between us stood the infected, frothing at the mouth and growling like an animal. The bars surrounding me didn’t look new, and somewhere in the back of my slightly freaked out mind, I wondered why the fuck club Silverleaf had cages.
Looking around, I discovered a space filled with candles. The air frigid, rows upon rows of wine stored in custom shelving filled most the space. It prevented me from getting a true perspective on how large the room was, but somehow, I imagined it was huge. This was the wine cellar. I should have peeked days ago, then I would have seen what Dr. Dick had stored down here and we could have bugged the fuck out already. There was nobody else down here, just me, Noah, Lawson, the zombie, and Dr. Dick, who stood on the opposite side of the cage walls, looking arrogant as ever, a white lab coat over his expensive tailored suit.
“What the fuck have you done?” I screamed, my voice a little rough and croaky.
Dr. Dick smirked, and waved an arm towards the infected.
“Meet Olivia, Terrence’s daughter.”
“Shit,” I muttered. What the hell were they doing with a living zombie? “Why haven’t you killed her?”
“She may be…salvageable.”
Disbelief struck me speechless as I stared at the insane fucker, trying my best to ignore Terrence’s snarling daughter. The doctor laughed at me and never before did I want to nut punch someone so bad.
“To beat Red Rage, first we must understand it, examine it. I have a theory that I haven’t yet been able to test, we’ve been waiting for survivors, much like yourself to pass through.”
“You’ve got twenty-two healthy survivors living here, use one of those pretentious assholes.” I snapped.
“Those pretentious assholes, as you call them, are all respectable, highly qualified, upper-class citizens, people worthy of living and establishing a new world. Inadequate leftovers, such as yourself, are not pertinent to the rebuilding of our society. You, my dear, are expendable.”
I snorted as I pushed away from the cage wall. “You, Dr. Dick, are a p
athetic jizz stain who wouldn’t last a day outside these walls.”
“And yet here you are –“
“Is Lawson okay? Why is my sister still sleeping?” I demanded, cutting off Dr. Dick’s words. He hated it when I did that, hence why I was going to take every chance I could to do it. His jaw clenched, and he glanced at Noah lying on the ground behind me.
“They’re fine. They’ll wake soon, definitely in time to see the show. You and your sister are going to be our first donors.”
“A donor? What the hell are you talking about?”
My head was spinning with information and disbelief. Dr. Dick grinned as he approached my cage, his hands resting around the bars as Olivia went fucking insane, her attention now on him.
“I believe the infected simply want to pass their contagion on to another. I wonder if once it’s been passed along, it dilutes in the body of the host.”
“That’s fucking stupid,” I spat out. “Red Rage is a virus with no cure. Lawson told me as much, and he had a contact in the CDC.”
Dr. Dick strolled down to Lawson’s cage, where Lawson was beginning to move, trying to shake himself free of the unwilling slumber. The doctor shrugged and turned to walk back down to my enclosure, his superior smile in place.
“Nobody truly knows what we are dealing with, hence why we must take the chance to examine it, watch the passing of the contagion, and the progress of it morphing inside someone’s body.”
Raising a brow, I placed my hands on my hips. “Do you know how fucked up that sounds? Are you really a doctor? I bet you’re one of those wanna be doctors who couldn’t quite cut it in the real world. You were probably a podiatrist…or a chiropractor. Are you one of those tiny wiener assholes that suffers from MD envy, Christ-O-Pher Buckley?”
The good doctor’s face glowed bright red, his eyes shooting daggers, his fists clenched around the bars so tight his knuckles whitened.
“I hit the nail on the head, didn’t I?” Laughing loudly, I leaned back against the bars. “You’re just a common ol’ nobody, probably lived in a blue-collar suburban house that was mortgaged to the hilt. Your credit cards are probably maxed. I doubt you had any friends because you’re obviously such an asshole. You know what I did in my former life doc?”
He didn’t answer, his body vibrating with fury.
“Little ol’ inadequate me was a musician. I made so much money that I could have bought a lifelong membership in a shit-stain like Silverleaf. My band and I had a private jet, we never stayed in anything less than five stars, and this inadequate face you’re glaring at right now graced the cover of Rolling-fucking-stone magazine, you limp dick prick!”
Now I was pissed, my temper fraying like a loose thread until I was ready to kill him with my bare hands. So consumed with anger, I took a step towards him, and the sneaky doctor grabbed my dress and wrenched me forward, slamming my forehead against the bars with such force it left me momentarily stunned.
“Take a look in the mirror, cunt!” Dr. Dick grabbed the back of my head and forced it to one side, so I was watching Olivia who was mindless in her hunger to get at one of us. “In a few hours time, that will be your fate.”
Never one to allow anybody to manhandle me, I lowered one hand and reached through the bars, grabbing the doctors tiny peen and balls. I squeezed as hard as I could, loving the sound of the asshole screaming like a bitch. As soon as he let go of my head, I backed away from my cage wall. I was breathing hard and fast, as I watched the psychotic asshole bend at the waist, his hands protectively shielding his damaged balls. Something trickled down my forehead, over the bridge of my nose and down my cheek. Wiping at the tickle, I glanced at the back of my hand and found blood.
“Next time you come within arms reach, I’ll rip your dick off.”
He didn’t respond, instead he turned his back on me and limped down one of the long aisles of wine and disappeared behind a slamming door. Glancing over the rabid Olivia, I found Lawson standing in the middle of his cage, his fists clenched and a look of rage on his handsome face. He didn’t say anything as he watched me move to Noah and slump on the floor beside her, my hand coming to rest on her back where I could feel the warmth of life flow through her.
“These people are insane,” I murmured.
Lawson was now sitting, his worried gaze fixed on me.
“I’m fine,” I waved him off wiping the blood from my face. “We’ll be fine. Dennis will notice us missing and come looking for us.”
Perhaps I was being overly hopeful, but right in this moment, hope appeared to be all we had. There was no way we could get out of these cages.
Olivia’s rabid growl caught my attention. I wondered how long she had been like this, locked down here, alone. The smell was pretty rotten, a combination of death and human waste. She was too thin, each rib protruding like a jagged edge, her joints too big for her limbs. Hollow, vacant eyes stared at me, the white hidden by dark, red blood. In this moment, I felt a terrible loss for the girl she had been. Only a couple of years younger than Noah, she had a life ahead of her, so many firsts to live. Now she was trapped in this body of death, caged and buried beneath the ground while a bunch of arrogant fucks sat above her dressed in expensive clothes from exclusive labels, eating hot meals, and drinking wine. Ignoring Olivia’s screams, I looked back toward Lawson who was still watching me with an intense expression on his face. One of longing and fear. With a manic screech Olivia’s body lunged toward me again, and I flinched.
“It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
Track Twenty-One: Pearl Jam, Black
CHAPTER 21
It took Noah a long time to wake up. Lawson had me check her pulse, and it was normal, but I sat with her head in my lap for what seemed like hours before she began to slowly climb from the fog induced haze and back into the land of the living. Now she was awake, I wished she were asleep again. Our new prison was terrifying enough, but the crazed zombie snarling and thrashing about just several feet away sent my sister into a tailspin of fear. Her entire body trembled, and she couldn’t take her eyes away from the infected girl. No matter what I said, what I sang, fear had frozen her in place, and not just her body, but it seemed her mind was trapped too. My own mind was battling to stay present, Olivia’s relentless growling was threatening to crack my composure. A loud bang made both Noah and I flinch. I glanced up through my long hair to confirm Olivia hadn’t beaten her way inside our cell. My nerves were shot, and the trembling in my limbs was making me feel sick. The sound of a door slamming in the distance pulled my attention in the direction of the rows of wine. More than one set of footsteps thudded against the stone floor, one of those sets clicking with the familiar sound of a spiky heel. Glancing toward Lawson’s cage, I found him standing, his fists curled around the bars, his glare promising death. Dr. Dick and Evelyn stepped into the dim light in front of the cages. Evelyn was carrying a video camera and was quick to go about setting it up on a tripod, completely ignoring us. Terrence followed the pair, moving slowly, his posture one of tension, the look on his face as he offered me a quick glance almost contrite. Fuck him, I didn’t have one ounce of sympathy for what he’d done. He’d lured us here, so he could allow his infected daughter to infect us. I didn’t feel anything but loathing for the man. Terrence moved right to his daughter’s cage but kept a wary distance as she hissed and snarled at him through the bars.
“Dr. Jizz Stain,” I calmly said as I pushed to my feet. Noah didn’t move, her eyes darting between our new guests and the zombie. Calm wasn’t exactly how I would have described how I was feeling right now, but I’d be damned if I’d let the doctor see how much his insane experiment was freaking me the heck out.
“This lever,” The doctor began, pointing to a steel handle outside the cage walls, “when pushed will release the locking mechanism on the door between your cell and Olivia’s.”
“You touch that lever, and I’ll snap your hand off and stuff it up your ass.”
; Dr. Dick ignored me and continued to explain what was about to happen. Lawson was beating on the bars to his cage, trying to pull the attention away from me and Noah.
“Once the camera is ready, we will begin.”
“Oh, joy,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re one of those sick fucks that can’t get off on traditional porn, aren’t you? You need a little blood and guts to get your teeny tiny dick hard?”
His jaw ticked, but otherwise he remained calm. Glancing at Lawson, I almost wanted to beg him to save us, to protect us, but there was nothing he could do from his cage. It would be unfair of me to ask such things from him and I wanted to be brave. For him and Noah.
He continued to make as much noise as possible, his eyes wide, face etched with frustration. My heart was hammering, and my teeth were chattering. I had no weapons other than my fists. Olivia was slightly shorter than me, her emaciated form obviously lighter. It was possible I could beat her to death, but if she managed to bite me, or if any of her blood accidentally entered my body, I’d become a zombie bitch.
“How you feeling, Terrence? Bet you’ve never seen someone die up close and personal before,” I snarled, hoping to appeal to his humanity, however little of it he had left.
“You don’t understand, she’s my daughter,” was all he offered me.
“Funny that, because me and Noah are someone’s daughter too!” I loved the way he winced.
“If my theory is correct, the infection will be passed and diluted from Olivia’s body. If it works, I promise I will find another viable donor to transfer the illness from your body.” Dr. Dick’s incredulous offer made me see red.
“Oh fuck off,” I snapped. “Firstly, fake Dr. Dick, your stupid fucking theory isn’t going to work. I’ve been travelling from Long Beach for well over a week now, and I haven’t seen one single person coming back from that,” I yelled, pointing at Olivia. “There is no coming back! Lawson is a medic, and he has a friend at the CDC who explained the infection attacks the brain. That is damage that can’t be undone.” With a loud growl, I slammed my arms against the walls of my cage. It hurt like hell, but watching all three of the assholes outside my bars jump was pretty damn satisfying.
Zombie Playlist: A Rock Zombie Romance Page 16