Zombie Fallout (Book 13): The Perfect Betrayal

by Tufo, Mark

  “Would you like a ride?”

  “Son of a bitch. That didn’t take long,” I mumbled, thinking on BT’s last words to me. Could be a coincidence, but the odds of Deneaux stopping to offer me a ride were about as likely as a grizzly sharing his salmon catch with a raccoon. “I’m going to pass. I think I could get black lung on the two-mile ride.” I could barely make out her features; the inside of the car nearly as thick with smoke as Pasadena after the Rose Bowl.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” she added.

  “Roll down a few more windows and I’ll think about it,” I told her. Deneaux was savvy. I was going to have to be careful I didn’t give any indication I had suspicions about her. I knew the adage about keeping your enemies close. I wasn’t sure that necessitated a literal translation. I expected her to start driving the moment I got in; she left the car in park.

  “I heard about your man, Springer. Terrible thing.”

  “It is.”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of having the Civilian Board send him some flowers.”

  “Flowers for a hand sounds like an even trade.”

  “Merely a gesture, Michael.”

  Not two sentences in and I was already close to blowing it. I couldn’t keep the disdain out of my voice. BT was right—I’d get annihilated at a kids poker tourney. If Deneaux noticed, she made no indication, not that she would have. This was the game she lived and killed for. She was the professional here, and I’d yet to leave the pony league.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. Thank you.”

  For that response, she eyed me intently. Had I apologized too quickly? I wasn’t in the habit of doing that very often, if at all, with her. That was more suspicious than my aggression.

  “It was a…difficult mission. I’m not quite myself yet,” I said. That part was true and seemed to appease her and gloss over my folly.

  “I heard it did not go as planned.”

  I wanted to beat it out of her, who she had heard it from, what she knew. Because I knew that in all likelihood, she knew it all. She was just throwing her toes in the water to see how deep in I was.

  “Who said that?” I asked, trying to seem more like I was curious than that I needed to know.

  She waved her hand. “People talk. Apparently, the zombies were not where they were supposed to be,” she said.

  Right now, the only people that should know that tidbit were my squad, Eastman’s crew, and Major Dylan. Someone on Eastman’s crew could have talked, sure, but I had a lot of faith in him, and that extended to his crew. No, Deneaux knew because she had set it up and must have been watching in real time. I wondered if the infra-red was visible through the blizzard, and whether she was rooting for the warm spots on the display to wink out, one after the other?

  “I can’t talk about it. You know my missions are classified.”

  “There were other problems…?” she prodded.

  If she was talking about the rounds or Stenzel’s rifle, I would know without a shadow of a doubt her complicity, as no one else besides my squad had that information; there was no leak there. And even if a strange set of circumstances happened, and one of them got drunk and talked, that couldn’t have happened yet, as they had all been in the waiting room to see what happened to their friend and squadmate.

  “Besides my private nearly dying, what are you talking about?” My calm demeanor belied what was happening in my roiling stomach and clunking heart. I needed her to ensnare herself, to wrap that fucking noose around her own frail-looking neck. Something in the look of my eye or the tone in which I delivered the words was enough to spook her.

  She smiled. “I’m just speculating, really. You are usually so careful on your missions, that when one of your personnel is injured, I imagine something must have happened out of your control. That is all I’m saying.”

  Now I knew she was full of shit. Careful on my missions? Since when? That moment, I did maybe the smartest thing in my entire life besides making sure I got Tracy to marry me. I counted to ten in my mind because I had been a split second from telling Deneaux I knew she was full of shit, that she had set the entire thing up, and that as soon as I got solid proof, I was going to nail her to the nearest wall. Sure, it would have felt more than satisfying saying the words, but no doubt I would have set into motion a series of events that would have found me dead in twenty-four hours. I had to figure she’d said all she had to feel me out. Deneaux didn’t do small talk, and wouldn’t willingly give information. Now I had to wonder: how much did she think I knew? If she knew how much I knew or knew she knew, she would probably still try to get rid of me.

  “It was a dangerous mission, Vivian. There’s always the risk of death to anyone who leaves these gates.” I said it smoothly, evenly, even. I might not be as versed in deception as she was, but I had my moments.

  She held my gaze long enough to make me uncomfortable. “It’s a sad thing.”

  I fantasized about slamming her head against the steering wheel until the cartilage in her nose pierced her brain, then I would slam her skull up against the glass on the driver’s side until that twisted brain of hers liquified and slid down onto the floor mats.

  “What are you getting at, Vivian? You’re not one much for empathy.”

  “Can’t I care?”

  “Are you asking me if it’s possible for you? Or are you asking my permission?”

  “Ah, look. We’re at your house. Wouldn’t it be a shame if something were to happen here?”

  I’d had my hand on the door handle, about to extract myself from the situation as quickly as possible. I stopped. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I meant in the abstract, Michael. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the zombies came here and ruined our perfect little world?”

  “I think some of us have other things to worry about,” I told her before I got out.

  Deneaux lit a cigarette. “Be seeing you around,” she said as she sped off.

  I watched her go, her black car fading into the distance. “Fucking bitch.”

  “Mike?” I hadn’t noticed Tracy standing on the front porch. “Are you okay?” She came up to my side. I involuntarily tensed from her touch. My expression softened as I looked upon her.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I told her.

  “I didn’t know you were back.”

  “Was at the hospital.”

  “Who’s hurt?”

  “PFC Springer.”

  “Brayden? How bad?”

  “He’s out of surgery; not sure if he’s going to live. If he does make it, he’ll no longer be a raider, though that might be for the best.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She placed her head upon my shoulder. “What was Deneaux doing here?”

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to my wife. I did my utmost to never lie to her; not that I could, anyway. She could sniff that out better than Henry a dropped piece of cheese. The problem was, if I voiced my concerns, she would get upset, and watching her get upset was a perfect storm for me. I would fill up on the same feelings, as if they were poured into the same glass. Deneaux had to go. That was not in question, but it had to be with finesse instead of my normal Hulk-smash routine. I needed to find the ones that worked with her, turn them as witnesses. Would I watch the firing squad that ended her life? It wouldn’t be because I wanted to, at least, not the majority of me, but I would have to watch to make sure it had happened. The woman escaped death like Houdini escaped chains. I went with the truth—a sliver of it, anyway.

  “I was walking home. She offered a ride.”

  I was saved from further questioning by the bounding Chloe. She’d blown right through the screen door in an effort to get to me. I wasn’t even the slightest bit mad I was going to have to fix that, as her quickly wiggling ass barreled into me. The dog knew very little about personal space, and I was just fine with that. Henry was sniffing around the edges of the blown-out screen. He stepped regally out and sat his ass on the porch, waiting for me to come up an
d pay tribute, which I eventually did, once Chloe stopped dancing around my legs. Riley and Holly waited inside, my good girls not wanting to ruin the door any further.

  “Where’s Ben-Ben?” I asked after I emerged from the dog pile. Enough fur covered my scrubs that I could now be considered an honorary member of their pack.

  “He’s at the vet.”

  I was concerned and it showed.

  “He’s fine, just observation. I don’t know how he did it, but he got into the fridge and ate a whole pig belly.”

  I stood. “He ate all the bacon?”

  “Yup,” she smiled,” and he was proud of it, even after I took his vomiting self to see the vet. She said he’d be fine, but she wanted to make sure he didn’t get dehydrated.”

  “That dog would eat pictures of bacon.”

  Tracy laughed.

  “I need to get some sleep. Can you wake me up in a few hours? I want to go back to the hospital.”

  “Of course.”

  I kissed her lightly on the lips, then with a little more force. I’d been so close to never being able to do this again, and the ache that thought struck in my heart was tangible. If I wasn’t so close to falling over, I would have seen how far I could have taken it. Although, with all the sets of eyes on us, it did feel a little public. I’d never been one for voyeurism. My entire pack followed us into the house. Not sure how we fit, but every single one of the dogs was in bed with me. When Tracy shook me awake, in what seemed five minutes later, even Patches was with us, perched atop my chest like the queen that she was.

  Patches stretched and yawned, giving me a full view of her impressive, razor-sharp teeth as she stepped off. I got out of bed, somehow not disturbing any of the critters; or if they did notice, they pretended not to.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Tracy asked as I quickly dressed.

  “Maybe the next time…” I stopped a hitch in my voice. “When he’s in recovery.” I was thinking if he gets into recovery.

  Was starting to think BT was keeping tabs on me; he was waiting outside the hospital doors when I got there.

  “You look rough,” BT said.

  “Hey, thanks. Good seeing you too,” I told him. “Any news?”

  “He’s alive and still in isolation. I got a visitor.”

  “Hmm, same one as me?”

  “She brought me beef stew. Said I must be wasting away from what I was being fed. Said it right in front of your sister.”

  “Well, if I had any doubts about who you were talking about, that ended that. How was the stew?”

  “Smelled great. I tossed it.”

  “Don’t blame you. The battle-axe picked me up when I left the hospital.”

  “Damn, that was quick.”

  “That’s what I said. Obviously, she didn’t admit to shit, but she hinted around that she knew our mission went sideways and the reasons why.”

  “You didn’t kill her?”

  “It would have been the appropriate response. What did she want from you?”

  “She didn’t talk at all about our Colorado visit. She was probing, asking questions about you. I think she was trying to find reasons to have you removed from command. I gave the entire squad a heads-up that she might stop by and that they should be cordial, but not to give her any information other than niceties.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I spoke to Kirby twice. Not sure if he gets the concept of niceties. Told him to maybe not answer the door.”

  “Might be for the best. Come on, let’s go check in on Springer.”

  We were allowed to view him through inch-thick glass. He was hooked up to a couple of machines; a dozen leads adhered to his body, tracking his vitals. He looked to be resting comfortably. I could not keep my eyes off of the restraints across his chest and the handcuff that secured him to the bed rail. That could have been anyone in my squad. We’d all almost been completely wiped away. And for what? Because Deneaux saw me as a perceived threat to her rise in power? Seriously, other than that, what could it be? We barely saw each other or communicated since we’d been here, and I was perfectly fine with that.

  A nurse came by after we’d been standing at the glass for close to half an hour. Springer hadn’t so much as moved a muscle. “He’s sedated. The doctors won’t bring him around for another forty-eight hours.”

  “How’s it look?” I asked her.

  “I’m not the doctor in charge.”

  “And that’s why I’m asking you. They won’t tell us anything.”

  She looked up and down the hallway. “Meet me in the smoking area in ten minutes. I have a break coming up,” she said before quickly departing.

  “More intrigue?” BT asked as we watched her go.

  “I hate intrigue.”

  “Is that because it’s a thinking person’s game? Sorry, sometimes I can’t shut it off.”

  “I’m gonna tell my sister to make you something special for dinner. Maybe one of her patented ketchup sandwiches.”

  “I can’t imagine how bad you would be if you weren’t my best friend.”

  We headed to the smoking area. Nurse Gellings was nervously puffing away at what looked like a small cigar. Vanilla flavored, if I wasn’t mistaken. I used to enjoy those, once upon a time, until for some unknown reason, they began to give me terrible stomachaches.

  She said nothing as we joined her under the metal awning.

  “Are you going to smoke something? Otherwise, it’ll look pretty suspicious.”

  I looked over to BT. “Sorry. I didn’t bring my pack of menthols,” he replied.

  “Not very politically correct of you to advance that stereotype,” I told him.

  “And this is why I take every shot I can against you.”

  “Shut up, you two. Smoke these.” She handed us each one of the sweet-smelling sticks. My stomach was already protesting, and I hadn’t even lit it. I dragged in the smoke; it cloyed to the insides of my mouth in a not so subtle manner. BT coughed like he’d missed taking the siphoning hose off fast enough and swallowed some of the caustic liquid.

  “This thing is so gross.” BT was looking at the cigar like I figured he looked at nearly every meal my sister made.

  “Your PFC, he’s starting to produce antibodies,” she started unexpectedly. As of yet, I didn’t know what she meant, and my questioning gaze conveyed that. “His body is ramping up for a fight. Amputating his hand was a wise course of action; his entire arm might have been the smarter play. Trace amounts of the infection moved past the initial wound. It’s still too insignificant an amount to detect with our tests, but that his body is responding to the threat is all the information we need.”

  “Why the clandestine meeting?” BT asked.

  “They’re trying an experimental drug on him.”

  “To fight off the infection?” I asked. I was having a hard time understanding why that would be something that needed to be kept a secret. If he became a zombie, that was it; bullet to the head or a quick burning in the furnace under the hospital, at that point any option available would be on the table regardless of the laundry list of side-effects that most likely went along with the cure, unless it was constant and unending anal leakage, then it might be best to call it a day. My thoughts traveled to the cavalier in a desperate bid to stave off the rising sense of trepidation I was feeling.

  “Sort of.” She took a long drag of her cigar, and instead of letting the smoke roll around in her mouth, she somehow inhaled and held it for a good long while. I was getting queasy watching her. “I’ve said too much.” She was making to leave. I grabbed her arm; she looked at my offending hand like it had smacked puppies.

  “You haven’t told us anything.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled it off. “That’s for the best.”

  “No problem. I’ll just go on inside and grab a doctor, tell him that Nurse Gellings just gave me some very distressing news, that some untested medications were being administered on my personnel, and that I needed to meet w
ith the Hospital Administrator and maybe the colonel himself.”

  “I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. No good deed goes unpunished.” She grabbed another cigar. “The medication, it won’t stop the infection. Nothing yet developed can.”

  “Okay…” I prodded, having absolutely no idea where this was going.

  “Look, I can get in some serious trouble for telling you this. In some very rare instances, it has been shown that the host holds on to their psyche for a period of time, sometimes an hour, other times a few days. There. I said it.” She let go of a deep smoke-tinged breath.

  My eyebrows were furrowed.

  “What exactly did you tell us?” Got to admit, I was happy when BT asked the question. I didn’t want to appear to be the only ignorant one.

  “I explained it in black and white.”

  “Did she say she explained it to the black and white? That seems racist to me,” I said.

  “You always pull out the race card,” BT said.

  “The drug. The drug they are giving him; it won’t stop the infection but they hope it will prevent him from losing his identity. By giving him serotonin inhibitors with large doses of antibiotics, they can forestall a complete takeover, possibly indefinitely.”

  “Wait, what?” None of this made sense.

  BT caught the implications immediately. “They want Springer trapped in his own body? He will be a zombie, and presumably want to do zombie things, but Springer’s mind will be inside there? For what nightmarish purpose could they want that?”

  Now I got it. “Are you fucking kidding me? What sick bastard would want that for anyone? The most humane thing to do would be just to shoot him, put him out of his misery.” I could not even fathom the depths of despair for those stuck in their own body but unable to do anything to control their actions or destiny. This was far worse than even being a paraplegic because a zombie was wont to do horrendous atrocities.

  “Why? I would think there’s a simple enough explanation,” the nurse responded to BT’s inquiry.