“Or maybe he’s used to seeing the same routine every single day,” Tommy said.
Tommy couldn’t put his finger on why, but that didn’t quite feel right.
They followed Albert into the science lab as the door eased shut behind them. Emin kept a close eye on their rear.
Albert picked a pair of gloves up off a stand and tossed them just inside the door. Unsatisfied with how they’d landed, he bent down to place them just so. Then he approached the stands where the scientists had deposited their futuristic shields and weapons.
He clapped his hands and rubbed them together with excitement. “How about we kit ourselves out? These shields are easy enough to use. You hold the handle out and press this button on the side—”
The forcefield popped into existence, making an appropriately space-age whoosh sound. More than big enough to protect their bearer’s head, torso, and legs.
“You can adjust it to your height. Here, let me show you.”
He activated the settings and they popped up on the shield as a large monitor. He accessed the size modification and altered it. The shield scanned him and automatically adjusted its height and width.
“Cool,” Jimmy said.
“But I guess we don’t need shields as there won’t be anyone out there with the same weaponry we’ll have,” Albert said.
He put the shield handle down and moved to the weapon stands. He picked up a large object almost the full length of his arm. It had the appearance of a frozen fireball, the thick end at his fingertips, and the tail along his arm. He handed one to each member of the team, as well as a single pistol to tuck in their pants. To Jimmy, he handed a single pistol.
“I’m not sure Jimmy should have one of these,” Emin said.
“I’m all right,” Jimmy said. “I can shoot.”
“I know you can. That’s not my concern. My concern is you’ll put a hole in yourself.”
“Sure,” Guy said, rolling his eyes. “That’ll be something new.”
After turning undead, they’d gotten used to their fair share of injuries.
“Jimmy’s in good shape,” Emin said. “I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
“I adjusted the power settings to their lowest level,” Albert said. “It won’t do much more than give him a little jolt.”
“Ow!” Jimmy shook his hand and sucked his thumb.
“Let me see,” Emin said.
Jimmy extended his hand and showed her the fleshy part of his thumb. It was no more than a red mark—you could get worse with inappropriate use of a regular office stapler.
“Okay,” Emin said. “But no aiming it at us, understand?”
Jimmy nodded his head. His excitement at getting his first real weapon no longer appeared to excite him.
The weapon felt extremely light in Tommy’s hands—almost as if he was carrying nothing at all. He couldn’t see where he ought to reload or where the trigger was. It felt otherworldly as if an alien race had visited and bestowed a great gift of advanced knowledge. Could these weapons be the Failsafe Colonel Maxwell had been referring to? Weapons that would tear the Architect’s plans asunder? Looking at them, he believed that might just be the case. “What kind of weapons are these?”
“Unlike anything you have on the surface, I’d wager,” Albert said.
“Do we really need to use them?” Emin said.
“I hope not,” Albert said. “But I fear it might be the case.” His ear twitched and he glanced at the door. “Everybody come stand over here, please.”
They moved to one side, clutching their weapons close.
The light switched to green and the door swung open. Exposed inside the room behind the large glass front as they were, Tommy instinctively crouched and held his weapon in both hands. He still couldn’t locate the trigger, so he doubted it would be much use to him as self-defense. Unless I remove it and swing it at them.
The scientist stepped inside the lab but didn’t enter further. He bent down and picked up the pair of gloves on the floor, a slight look of confusion on his face. He turned around and left. His footsteps hastened as he sped up to catch his friends.
“This way,” Albert said.
They crossed the room and leaped through the doorway before it shut. They continued down the long corridor, passing the other research rooms—empty now. It must be lunchtime, Tommy thought. They reached the elevator and stepped inside. Albert pressed the button for the ground floor.
“You can’t imagine how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” he said.
The door slid shut on the ancient contraption and they began to rise.
“I repeat the question,” Emin said, “what the hell just happened?”
By the look of it, they’d escaped one of the world’s most well-protected secret research facilities without firing a single shot or alerting one soul. And they’d done it with an eighty-year-old man-child called Albert who clutched his alienlike assault rifle close and bounced excitedly on his toes.
You just couldn’t make this stuff up.
4.
HAWK
Sam and Hawk broke into an apartment in the old tenement building and made themselves comfortable.
Sam searched the cupboards for something to eat. One cupboard door snapped off and hit the floor, the wood beneath the hinge having turned wet and moldy long ago. “I thought the guards would give up chasing us once we reached the surface.”
“Shows how little you know.” Hawk watched the auto blood injector in his leg, ensuring it fired right when it was supposed to—it did—and then fell back onto a squeaky old sofa with foam falling out the sides. “They won’t stop until they catch us or we’re dead.”
Sam shoved the tins aside. Most of them had gone out of date during the time of Obama. “That’s comforting.”
“Look on the bright side,” Hawk said. “If they’re still chasing us, we must be getting under the Architect’s skin. If we weren’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to catch us.”
“Unless. . .”
Hawk sat up and turned his head to one side. “Unless it’s all part of the Architect’s plan. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
Sam ran the idea through her mind. “How can it be? Do you honestly think he’d want us to escape?”
“No. But he’ll have a plan in case someone did manage to escape from his hidden lair of evil.”
“Even if he does have a plan to deal with us, it can’t be his preferred plan. I’m sure he’d prefer to keep his guards closer to home, for one.”
Hawk had never thought of it that way before. He felt like he’d been under the Architect’s thumb the entire time, but now that he thought about it. . . maybe there was no thumb. The Architect could make as many plans as he liked but he couldn’t control how they turned out. There were simply too many variables.
Hawk was not a man who made plans. What was the point when they so often failed? He was a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy, letting the chips fall where they may. Someone who made intricate plans gave the impression they were in control, but in reality, they weren’t, not really.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “He didn’t want us to escape. That’s why they’re chasing us. And they probably don’t know where we are either.” Hawk leaned back on the dilapidated sofa. “Which doesn’t help us much with our current predicament, does it? We’re never getting near that elevator with the guards watching it.”
Sam checked the refrigerator and wished she hadn’t. The previous occupants appeared to have been attempting to grow their own slug farm. She gagged and backed away.
Hawk leaned forward on the sofa once again. “Maybe we’re coming at this all wrong. Maybe there’s another way out of here we’re not seeing.”
“Like what? The elevators were built as the only way in or out. If you know of another exit, I’d love to hear it.”
“We could look for a helicopter. Maybe the one we used to get into the city the first time?”
“
It crashed and burned—and nearly burned you with it.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You forgot about that?”
“I’ve almost died so many times recently it’s hard to keep up. Scaling the walls leaves us exposed and unprotected. Maybe we can tunnel under them?”
“The sewers?” Sam said, clutching her rumbling stomach.
Hawk cringed. “Can’t say I’m too excited about going into another sewer. Especially with what happened to me last time.”
“Maybe we could find a manhole close to the wall. We wouldn’t have to be underground long, only until we reach the next opening.”
Hawk flicked through some skin mags on an upturned soiled cardboard box. Busty & Beautiful. Shaving Ryan’s Privates. “Do you think this is a crack den we’ve wound up in?”
“That would explain the slug farm and lack of food.”
Hawk stood up and checked himself for impaled needles. “The Architect would have sent the guards to watch the sewers as well as the walls. We used them once. He’ll suspect we’ll use them again.”
Sam braced her hands on her hips and shook her head. “So, let’s get this straight. We can’t go over the wall and we can’t go under it. You don’t happen to have some dynamite on you, do you?”
“Fresh out.”
“Well, you’re no help.”
“This place is dirty. Let’s try next door.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Because crack dens always set up next door to well-stocked pristine family homes.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Sam was surprised. “Really?”
Hawk raised his eyebrows. “The worst I saw, right next door to an elementary school.”
Sam shivered. “Awesome.”
Hawk moved to the front door, poked his head out, and checked up and down the hall. He heard nothing—even the undead dotted around in the neighborhood saw nothing. He crossed the hall and tried the door. Locked. He tried the next door and the next.
“I guess the crackheads are the only considerate ones,” Sam said.
Hawk slammed his heel into the next door they came to. They hustled inside and shut it behind them.
“I thought you were joking. . .” Sam said.
The apartment was a pristine family home. Sam ran into the kitchen and checked the cupboards. “Fully-stocked,” she mumbled under her breath. Even the fridge was slug-free. She shook her head.
“What?”
“I’m shocked at my sense of awe that there aren’t any slugs in the fridge.”
“After working as a slave, I guess you’ve got to be pleased with the small things.” Hawk fell onto another sofa and wriggled to get comfy.
Sam fished the bread out, as well as any ingredients she could shove onto it and call it a sandwich. “Hungry?”
Hawk tapped his auto-injector. “Just ate.”
“We could make dynamite, though I doubt it’ll be enough to get through a wall of that size.”
“We’d have to set multiple explosions off, each time getting the guards’ attention. We’ll run and get shot, or suffer from our own explosives, doing their job for them. Not a pretty outcome either way.”
Sam rammed the sandwich in her mouth, ingredients slopping out the end. “There’s only one real way out of here, Hawk.”
Hawk looked away. He’d had the same idea a while ago. Maybe she had too but pussyfooted around the concept until now in case there was another option. “I know.”
Sam seemed surprised he knew what it was. “We can’t fight the zombies and the guards at the same time.”
“So, we get them to fight each other.” The words died on Hawk’s lips. He couldn’t believe he was even considering it.
Sam finished off her sandwich. “You are the zombie whisperer.”
“Don’t call me that.” His voice had a little more venom in it than he intended.
“Do you think you could bring the zombies together?” Sam said. “Form a large horde?”
“And then. . .” The words stuck in his throat.
“And tell them to attack.”
She said the words so easily. Didn’t she understand what she was asking him to do? “You want me to set a trap and murder my brothers?”
“They’re not your brothers anymore. They’re the Architect’s men.”
“If what you said earlier is true, then they’re here against their will. A man shouldn’t be murdered for protecting the ones he loves. And murdering them here in the streets like dogs is too close to what happened to me and Tommy and our real brothers. Someone lured us here to be murdered in a zombie trap. I can’t do it to them. I won’t do it.”
Hawk got up and turned to leave.
“Hawk. . . Hawk, wait. I’m sorry.”
He opened the door.
“Hawk, will you stop? Please.”
He did. He owed her that much, at least.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how it would affect you.”
Hawk still stood in the doorway.
“Will you turn around?”
He did.
“If we don’t do this, we forsake the lives of everyone outside these walls, and that’s a fact.” Sam reached up and put a hand to his cheek. “That’s what it’s really down to, isn’t it? Either the people inside these walls die or the people out there will. And don’t forget which side of the wall I’m on.”
Sam wore ill-fitting walking boots they’d lifted from the camping store and a parka priced at half-off. He couldn’t look her in the face.
“I don’t want to kill my brothers. They came here for the same reason we did. I won’t bring a flood of undead down on them. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Not after I went through it myself.”
He marched out, leaving Sam to her thoughts.
* * *
SAM
Two hours passed and Hawk still hadn’t returned. Sam prodded the front door open and peered around the frame. The chipped paint and scabbed floorboards offered little in the way of danger. She stepped out and edged down the long hallway. She avoided the front entrance she and Hawk had used to enter the building and instead approached the back door.
The building directly behind had been reduced to a large crater, a mound of rubble, and a strong thrust of water from a burst pipe. She stepped around it gingerly, growing eyes in the back of her head.
She felt guilty for making Hawk feel the way he did. It wasn’t his fault, what had happened to him, and she hadn’t properly considered the ramifications of what she was asking him to do. She didn’t want to kill these innocent men either—who did?—but the information she and Hawk possessed about the Architect’s location and a sketch of his plans were more important than any single life. She included her own in that.
She had, ever since studying medicine as an undergrad, changed her opinion of death and its effect on the world. It was a part of life. All things died, and after informing the sixth family that particular day a loved one had passed, she became immune to it. She’d come to terms with death a long time ago.
Her foot slipped on an errant rock and she stumbled, almost falling flat on her face. Hurt herself here and she would be in serious trouble. She turned to head back to the apartment. Hawk wouldn’t leave her there forever, he’d come back for her eventually. As she turned around, she saw the figure she’d been looking for.
Hawk padded across the alley’s mouth and stood on its curbstone lip facing the Main Street. A rat looked at her, sniffed, and then moved on. Sam didn’t give the creature so much as a second look. After slugs, rats were furry friends.
Out of habit, Sam checked both ways before stepping on the street, joining Hawk. The road looked like much of what Austin had become. A home for filth, vermin, death, and destruction. At the far end of the road, a building blazed with lively fire. It was only a matter of time before it swept through the rest of the street, taking a sizeable chunk of the city along with it. The buildings that lined the road were tall. She guessed they must have been in the financial
or business district—she hadn’t been to Austin before the virus struck. Hell’s decorator had done a swell job.
Hawk didn’t turn in her direction as she approached. He kept his head down and focused on the tarmac at his feet.
“This is where it happened,” he said.
“Where what happened?”
“Where I died. Right here on this street. See that mound of bodies over there? That’s where I fell. There were a lot more cadavers at the time. My entire team. They fell before I did. The zombies cascaded from that building over there and slammed into the ground. You can still see the blood splatters. And then they ran at us. We had no idea what was happening. One body is missing, and that’s mine. I died beside my brothers. I should be with them.”
Sam pictured a similar road where Tommy must have fallen, a dirty street with no one to hold his hand, to usher him into the next world. Yes, death had become a part of her job description, but dying alone. . . That wasn’t something she ever wanted for anyone.
She asked Tommy about it on countless occasions but he would never speak of it as if he wanted nothing more than to scrub the memory from his mind. Sam shook her head, trying to remove the image, but it was already emblazoned there. She couldn’t remove it now.
Sam cleared her throat. “I was wrong to ask you what I did. I’m sorry. I meant nothing by it. I only wanted to get what we know out to Tommy, to the military, to someone who can do something about it.”
“I want the same thing, but I can’t do what you asked.”
“I understand.” She braced his arm with a hand and a friendly smile. “Tommy feels the same way about his brothers. I should have known better. But listen, we still need to get out of here. I have a new idea.” Sam hoped she could bring him onboard. There was no way she could do it on her own.
He turned to look at her uncertainly. “Go on.”
“If the Architect is holding the guards’ families hostage, they’ll be holding them somewhere nearby.”
“You’re thinking they’re in the city?”
“That’s what my money would be on. And I even know where he might put them.”
“Where?”
Death Squad (Book 4): Zombie World Page 4
