A zone near the back of the Sanctum had been designated as the landing pad for the two helicopters that Jones and his fellow soldiers had brought to the party. While they were fearsome weapons of war, she also conceded that they wouldn’t even make a dent in the horde headed their way. After a few runs at the undead, their meager ammunition would be spent.
As Garver settled the chopper in for the final approach, everyone inside had a view into the area next to the landing pad. At least thirty people stood there waiting for the helicopter to land. It wasn’t difficult to see from their body language that there was some discord in the ranks.
Eli let out a loud sigh and asked, “I wonder what the hell they want?”
“They should be getting ready,” Jo said.
“No shit,” Eli replied.
Garver expertly guided the helicopter in. All the people on the ground lifted their arms and hands to cover their faces as the chopper kicked up dust and debris. Once the runners hit the ground, Garver went through the steps to shut the engine down to conserve fuel.
As soon as the blades slowed down to a gentler rotation, several people in the crowd broke for the helicopter. Karen Gray was in the lead, but a couple of men followed closely behind her, and their expressions seemed to spell trouble.
“What’s going on here, Eli?” Jones asked.
“I have no idea, but we’re about to find out,” Eli said as he jerked the door to his right open.
“You may want to let the rotors slow down a bit more,” Garver said, but Eli ignored him and jumped out the side.
Jo felt compelled to follow him and made her way out. She knew her fate and the future of her people rode on what they did in the next thirty-six hours. If forced to admit it, she doubted if any of them would be alive in two days, but the only choice was to fight. Lying down and dying wasn’t something she planned to do.
Jones, with his bad leg, was forced to disembark the chopper in a more deliberate fashion. There was something in him that didn’t want to take whatever shit storm that was brewing, anyway. There were much bigger fish to fry, and he had no time for a pissing match with the locals.
Karen barely beat the two men to Eli and said, “These men and their families want to leave.”
Eli skidded to a stop. Jo eased in behind him, but decided to stay out of it for now. These were Eli’s people, not hers.
“Robbie, Dirk, what the hell are you talking about?”
Dirk was the bigger of the two men, standing in at six-two. His features were striking as he had a lantern jaw, eyes that seemed too close together, and a military-style crew cut.
“We’ve heard what is coming, and we want out,” Dirk said.
“What?!” Eli exclaimed.
“I tried to tell them that no one leaves,” Karen Gray said as she tried to edge around Dirk. He did his best to block her by sticking out his elbow.
“What the hell, Dirk,” Eli said. “Let Karen by.”
Reluctantly, Dirk withdrew his elbow, but he wasn’t done.
“I said we want to leave,” Dirk said. “Me, my family, and Robbie and his people.”
“Where do you think you’re going to go?” Eli said.
“Well, this place looks like it is ground zero for the apocalypse, so anywhere but here looks good,” Dirk said. “You can’t hold us here.”
“Yeah,” Robbie said as he stepped up next to Dirk. “You can’t make us stay.
Robbie wasn’t the physical specimen that Dirk was. He was slight, while Dirk was broad-shouldered and big-boned. It was easy to tell that Dirk was the leader, and Robbie was the follower.
Eli took a moment to compose himself as he reached up and scratched the side of his head. “You are right. We can’t hold you and your families here, but how are you getting to where you are going?”
Dirk shifted his feet as he contemplated Eli’s question.
“We’ll need a truck or something,” Dirk said. “Plus some weapons. Not too many.”
“And where will you get that truck?” Eli asked.
By then, Jones had hobbled over behind Jo on his crutches.
“We’ll just take one from the motor pool,” Dirk said.
Karen Gray slid in beside Eli and said, “No, you won’t. Those belong to the Sanctum. If you leave, you are no longer a part of us.”
Robbie’s face reddened, and he said, “That’s not fair. We’ve built this place and fought beside you all of the way. We deserve a piece of this place.”
Dirk lowered his chin and tried to put on his best stern expression. “We’ve earned it.”
Eli looked to the ground and kicked a dirt clod. When he looked up, he said, “I’m sorry. You leave, you do it with the clothes on your back, and one handgun apiece.”
Dirk’s mouth fell open as he tried to form words. It took him a few seconds, but he finally said, “We stay, and we die with all of you. From what you’ve said, there’s a shit ton of zombies headed our way. There is no way we can survive.”
“You make us walk out of here, and we’re dead,” Robbie chimed in. “Leaving in a truck is our only chance.” His voice broke at the end of the sentence, and his eyes were rimmed with tears of frustration.
Sergeant Jones cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, I don’t want to butt in on your business here, but you can’t run from this horde. Even if you had a truck, you’d only have so much gas. Once you run out, you’re done for. While you search for more, they’re still coming. You may see them as slow, but they don’t sleep. While you’re stopping to scrounge for food or more gas, they are eating up the miles behind you. And you do have to sleep. When you do, they just keep coming. There is no running. This is where we all have to make a stand.”
A hush fell over the crowd, and Jo saw the reason why the soldiers around Jones followed him. He didn’t shout or try to talk down to you. In his quiet confidence, he told you how it was, and you believed him. She couldn’t help but be impressed by it, just as she admitted to herself that she had missed him. Earlier, he had split off from their main group to rejoin his soldiers, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever see him again. His return to their ranks brought on a sense of ambivalence in her.
“This is bullshit,” Dirk said. “Our choice is to get run down in the dirt because you won’t give us a vehicle or to stay here and be devoured. That’s not much of a fucking choice.”
“But it is a choice,” Eli said.
Robbie’s head fell, and he refused to look anyone in the eye. Dirk held Eli in what he hoped was a smoldering gaze, but came off more as petulant.
“This is fucking bullshit,” Dirk said as he violently jerked around and pushed his way through the crowd of people who had gathered.
It took Robbie a few seconds to look up, but when he did, there wasn’t a display of anger, only of hurt. He had a family, and he felt he had to do what he had to do to protect them, but no one would give him the opportunity. Unlike Dirk, he sullenly turned and walked away, sliding through the onlookers.
Eli put his hands in the air and shouted, “Shows over folks. We’ve got a lot to do. So get to it.”
When Jo looked over the crowd, she tried to size them up and saw a myriad of expressions. In some, she saw fear. In others, she witnessed that their sympathies might be with Dirk. In most, she sensed bitter resignation, as if they tacitly said, we don’t think this will work, but we’ll do our best.
This didn’t inspire her with confidence, but few things did these days. She had seen more than her fair share of friends die in the past year and a half, but underneath it all, she was a fighter. While she couldn’t do much to inspire the people of the Sanctum, she’d do all she could to get her people to go all in.
People at the edges of the crowd peeled off and headed off toward some sort of assignment. Once this started, it gained momentum, and within a few seconds, the group broke away like flowing water. They left Eli, Jo, Karen Gray, and Sergeant Jones standing alone as Garver tinkered with the helicopter.
Jones broke
the silence and said, “That guy could be trouble.”
Eli said, “You don’t know him. He’s a good man. He’ll hold the line when it comes down to it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jones said. “I can understand where he’s coming from. Hell, I’m scared shitless, but if people start breaking and making a run for it, we’re all dead.”
Karen Gray stepped past Eli and turned back on the small group. “That won’t happen. We all are committed to the ethos of the Sanctum. It has been our bedrock, and we will not break.”
Jones narrowed his eyes as he looked at Karen Gray, but slid past her and glanced at Jo. A silent communication passed between them, and Jo knew what it was. There was no disguising the skepticism behind Jones’ eyes, but Karen Gray didn’t know Jones, as well as Jo, did. Jo saw it and just nodded her head slightly.
Jones said, “Sure. He’ll come around,” but there was little conviction behind his words.
Chapter 4
The Scientists
“Make a path,” Henry shouted as he pushed the cart across the rutted grassy area in front of the medical school. Doc Wilson was shoulder-to-shoulder with Henry behind the cart. Both of their faces strained from the effort. Behind them, Molly wore a severely pissed off expression as she worked to keep up with them.
Strapped down to the cart was what a casual observer would say was a dead body. Or something close to death. It was a man, or had been. Whoever had worked the man over, did a real number on him. Both of his knees sported ugly gunshot wounds, looking more like ground-up hamburger than knees. On display on his left shoulder was a devastating matching wound, showing off the bone and mangled meat.
People were in motion all around them, but once they saw what was on the cart, they gave it a wide berth. Their eyes were wide, and sometimes their mouth gaped open, but they stayed out of the way.
“Where are we going with him?” Henry asked.
Henry was a fifteen-year-old kid who had been thrust into a position of responsibility based on the legacy of his father, Greg. Greg had led the survivors at a small church in Portsmouth, Ohio. His steady guidance led the group through the dark early days of the Outbreak, but he ended up being killed by a mad genius who had learned to control zombies.
“Karen Gray said to get him to the medical school,” Doc Wilson said.
“I say dump this fucking monster right here, and we crush his head flat with a hammer,” Molly said. She was Henry’s unofficial girlfriend and resident goth girl, dressed mostly in black and torn jeans.
“Molly, we’ve talked about this,” Henry said, trying not to sound like he was chiding her. “If what he says is true, there are more things like him out there. We need to see what makes him tick.”
“I say what makes him tick is pure fucking evil,” Molly replied, crossing her arms across her chest. If someone were watching her closely, they would have noticed a slight shiver go through her body.
Doc Wilson had been with Henry and all the survivors back in Portsmouth. He had treated the sick and dealt with the dying. His appearance made Henry think of what Ichabod Crane would look like - tall and lanky, almost gangly. He had near shoulder-length gray hair. At the beginning of the Outbreak, it had been salt and pepper gray, but the stress had really advanced the graying process.
Molly had been a little shell shocked after losing her family in the early days of the Outbreak. It had taken a while, but she had come out of her shell in a big way after they had escaped from the Manor when the troops took over.
Karen Gray had told them that some scientists in the Sanctum might be able to examine the half-dead creature. She had some hope that they might learn something that they could help them take on the on-coming zombies, especially one’s like the thing on the cart. He was mostly dead, but also alive. Something halfway between death and life and something terribly dangerous.
After some kind of unholy transformation, unlike all the zombies roaming the world, he retained his human intellect, but like the undead, he felt no pain. He also exhibited incredible strength. In one instance, he had picked up a large chunk of concrete weighing at least twenty pounds and had tossed it overhanded like throwing a fastball. That was no small feat in Doc Wilson’s estimation. In fact, he considered it superhuman.
The other and most disturbing side effect of the transformation from living to this half-dead state was the fact that these new creatures seemed to have an instilled hatred of the living. This specific one led a smaller horde on a direct attack on the dormitory where Eli and Karen Gray had dispatched many of the older and less able residents of the Sanctum. Henry, Molly, Doc Wilson, and Del had been forced to defend the place against the onslaught.
Sergeant Jones and his helicopter were the only things that saved those people because that dormitory was outside the protective walls of the Sanctum.
A group of people pushing their own cart crossed paths with Henry, Doc Wilson, and the half-dead thing they were transporting. One of the people with the other cart nearly screamed when they glanced over at the half-dead creature.
Another one of them asked, “What the hell is that thing?”
“See?” Molly exclaimed. “No one wants that thing around.”
Henry and Doc Wilson ignored her, and the people with a cart were out of the way, rolling east. Their cart was loaded with ammunition being transported to the east wall and the projected point of attack for the zombie horde. Although everyone inside conceded that with a horde of this size, the Sanctum would be surrounded. That meant defending in all directions, and that would be nearly impossible.
“It’s up ahead,” Doc Wilson said and gave the cart a gentle nudge for a slight course correction. Together, they pushed the cart toward the front of a three-story building that resembled a barn. White columns were spaced out evenly on the front, holding up a porch roof, which was also painted white.
“Let’s go for the front doors,” Doc Wilson said.
They had to redirect a little to hit the handicap ramp, but were able to navigate underneath the porch roof.
“What do we do now?” Henry asked. “Who are these scientists?”
“Karen said one was named Hollaway, and the other was named Darke,” Doc Wilson said.
“Darke, really?” Henry said. “That sounds ominous.”
“Don’t go there,” Doc Wilson replied. He was about to say something else, but a voice from off to their left interrupted him.
“Bring it over here,” A man sticking his head around the corner of the building said. He was mostly bald, with curly patches of hair sticking out of the side of his head. He wore a badly soiled lab coat.
“Doctor Hollaway?” Doc Wilson asked.
“No, Darke,” the man said, and Henry thought he detected a slight accent. Northern Europe, maybe.
Darke disappeared from view.
“That is one creepy-ass looking guy,” Molly said.
“Molly, please,” Doc Wilson said as he and Henry started off toward the corner, pushing the cart ahead of them. As soon as they made it around the corner, they saw Darke holding a double-wide door open about twenty feet away.
“This is the service entrance,” Darke said. “There are no steps.”
“Okay, thanks,” Doc Wilson said.
As soon as they made it beside Darke, he asked, “So, this is the subject?”
“Yes,” Henry said, and added, “in all his glory.”
“In all of his shittiness,” Molly said.
“He certainly is a messy thing,” Darke said, but he also seemed held captive to the half-dead thing, studying it, unable to look away. There was a clinical aloofness to his expression.
“Yes, that had to happen to subdue him,” Doc Wilson. Then he asked, “Where to?”
“Oh, yes,” Darke said, breaking from his spell. “Down the hall to the left, then take the first right.”
Henry and Doc Wilson shoved the cart forward as Darke held the door open. The group moved into a short hallway that led to an intersectin
g corridor. Henry and Doc Wilson did as they were told and took a right at the new intersection. A figure stood outside a door, ahead on the right.
Henry could make out that it was a man. He was tall with a rigid posture that seemed posed as he had his arms crossed in front of him with his hands clasped. Something about him made Henry think of an undertaker, and he attributed it to the man’s dark clothing.
As they closed on the man, Doc Wilson said, “Doctor Hollaway, I presume?”
“Yes,” the man said in a deep and gravelly voice. “That is me.”
He wore dark-colored pants, a royal blue shirt, and a black jacket. Since he was African-American, this ensemble of clothing gave him an imposing presence.
Hollaway reached out and opened the door for Henry and Doctor Wilson. It took some maneuvering, but they were able to get the cart into a dimly lit laboratory space. It was easy to tell that it doubled as a teaching classroom as there were several rows of tables starting about halfway back leading into the back of the room. The front area was spacious, though, with enough space to put on demonstrations and conduct experiments for students when it was a learning lab.
Henry and Doc Wilson pulled the cart to a stop in an open area in front of the room where a long research bench sat. Once there, they let the cart go, and the back end fell to the floor with a hard clunk.
Hollaway and Darke entered the room and made their way to the cart. Hollaway did a circle around the cart, examining the half-dead creature from different angles. All the time, his hands remained clasped in front of his waist. After another half revolution, he stopped, and his eyes left the creature and went to Doc Wilson’s face.
“What do you propose we do with this thing?” Hollaway asked.
It took Doc Wilson a moment to speak, but he finally said, “I spoke with Karen Gray, and she agreed that we should study it. We need to find out if there’s anything we can learn from it to help us against the other ones like it. We think there are more.”
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 2
