“Not necessarily in the face,” Holloway said. “We have enough to spray an area.”
“How big of an area?” Eli asked, still a little hot.
“Maybe a section twenty-five yards by twenty-five yards,” Holloway replied.
Eli closed his eyes and let out a groan. “That is not helpful.” He shot an index finger into the air. “First, we have to identify one of these devils, and you have to remember that they don’t look that much different than your regular run-of-the-mill zombie.” He added his middle finger to the index finger and said, “And if there is a snowball’s chance in hell that we do identify them, then how the hell do we spray one of these bastards in the face.”
“Well, you don’t have to spray them in the face,” Darke replied.
“That was metaphorical,” Eli said. He whirled around and started to walk away. “This is a waste of time, and we have precious little of that.”
“Wait,” Jones said, and Eli stopped and turned around.
“What?!” Eli said with some heat in his tone.
“Maybe we can spray from the sky?” Jones looked to the two scientists and asked, “Can you rig up some kind of sprayer system?”
Holloway shrugged and said, “We are scientists, not engineers.”
“You know, it’s your ass on the line along with the rest of us?” Jones asked.
“Let me put it this way,” Holloway said. “I don’t drink coffee, so you don’t want me making your coffee.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Eli said.
“You don’t want us making some half-baked sprayer,” Holloway said. “If we make a mistake trying to make a delivery device, people will die.”
“So, we’re still nowhere,” Eli said, not hiding the disgust in his tone.
“You’ve got a lot of smart people here,” Jo stepped toward Eli and said. “Isn’t there someone here that might be able to do something?”
Eli paused, and Jo could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
“We do have a couple of old-time farmers,” Eli said. “I think one was a pilot and might have also done crop dusting.”
“Could he do something?” Jones asked.
“You know, we’re on a clock here,” Eli said.
“I used to work on my Uncle’s farm, and we used a sprayer on the crops. I might be able to help,” Del said.
“This might be our best chance to take these fuckers down,” Jones said. “We can spare a couple people on the walls.”
“Okay, okay!” Eli said as he reached for the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. He lifted it, pressed the talk button, and said, “Lassiter, come in.”
Lassiter got back to Eli, and, together, they pulled the old crop dusting farmer off the wall and told him to report to the science lab where the scientists were.
Jo moved in close to Del and, in a low voice, asked, “Do you think this can be done?”
“It depends if Jones and his pilots can deal with it,” Del said.
Jones overheard Del’s comment and said, “Oh, we’ll make it work if you can get it done.”
“What about Garver? Jo asked. “He’s not going to like that thing on his helicopter.”
“He’ll deal with it,” Jones replied. “You can be sure of that.”
Jones moved toward the scientists and the doctor, then nodded his head toward Grayson on the cart, “What about him?”
Doc Wilson answered, “He’s in really bad shape. You guys really did a number on him.”
“So, are you doctoring that...that thing?” Jo asked.
“Well, he’s no longer a thing,” Doc Wilson said. “He’s a human, and that makes him my patient.”
Del shook his head back and forth while saying, “There you go with your bleeding heart shit again, Doc.”
Doc Wilson took in a deep breath and let it out, then said, “Truth be told, I don’t feel comfortable with him, either. But if I can get him conscious, we might be able to learn something -- something that might help.”
“Keep us in the loop, Doc,” Jo said. She reached over and poked Del in the arm and said, “We gotta get back on the line.”
Chapter 24
The Voice in the Night
Rain dripped off Audrey’s forehead into her eyes, forcing her to wipe it away. She didn’t like the rain for many reasons, but it had dampened the forest fires, which was a good thing.
They had been on this march for hours, with her skirting around the fires on their left flank. Being this far out, though, put her miles away from Maxwell.
Audrey didn’t like being out of contact with him this long, but Lance had ‘ordered’ that she take the left side of their continuous march eastward. In the past, they had noted that whatever attracted the zombies to them seemed to be diminished in the rain. Had she wanted to be introspective about it, she might have considered that something about their odor was what attracted the zombies, but she wasn’t in the mood. She rarely was.
She knew they had already shed a lot of their numbers in the fires and the smoke. The zombie’s tiny little brains either got confused, or the fire drove them outside the influence of the remaining three half-dead members of their cozy little team.
With the rain, they were sure to lose more, but that wasn’t on her radar. She just wanted to stop this pointless march eastward. She wanted to see Maxwell again.
She hadn’t talked to or had any contact with him in almost ten hours, and she didn’t know when she would. With Grayson’s departure from their group, Lance had become a little jumpy and nervous. Grayson had been the dominant partner in their duo, and leadership didn’t seem a natural fit. All Audrey knew was that neither she nor Maxwell wanted anything to do with leading this walking shit show.
There were times that she wondered why she was even a part of it at all. What was the point? But then she asked herself if there was any point at all to anything?
Since becoming this new and wondrous creature, existing between the worlds of the living and the dead, it seemed as if she were driven by some force outside herself. She attributed some of this to the voice that echoed in the back of her head.
In her current condition, she didn’t sleep, but there were times that she dropped down into a lower level of consciousness. It was almost a trance-like state where she felt she didn’t think at all, but this was when the voice told her to head eastward. It also told her to kill every living human being she came in contact with.
She never knew when she was in one of the traces, though. The monotony of the march sometimes dropped her into them. Other times, it was just the darkness both inside and outside of her that brought on the voice.
At first, the voice was in the background as she trudged along amidst the zombies. It was almost a whisper. It was almost comforting, assuring her that it was there for her. Sometimes it purred, and other times it growled.
It had never screamed, though, and that’s what it did right at that moment.
“Audrey,” it said, “you keep doing what I’m telling you to do, and I will make you whole again.”
The palpable force of the voice caused her to stumble as she fell into a line of zombies, causing them to crash into the ones next to them. This created a cascade in which a slew of zombies spilled across the muck and grit.
They didn’t seem bothered and just worked their way back onto their feet, feeling no need for an apology. Really, they had no feelings at all.
“What?” Audrey spoke in a groggy voice.
“What you are,” the voice sounded inside her head, “you don’t like being that way.”
She felt strange speaking aloud to a voice inside her head and wondered if she had drifted into the land of insanity. The thing she had become was otherworldly, so anything was possible, she guessed. It was that or she had completely lost her mind.
“I...I…” she stammered. “I didn’t want to die.”
“But do you call this living?” The voice asked.
It took her a moment to collect her ju
mbled thoughts. “No.”
“I can make you truly alive again,” the voice said. “Fully and totally.”
Because she had slowed her pace, the zombies rammed into her from behind. The sheer inertia of their numbers pushing her forward. It was like a wave, almost lifting her along.
“Who are you?” She asked.
If this were a phone call, the line would have been filled with a low static hum. Instead, it was filled with Audrey’s doubts and fears. Maybe who or whatever this was could offer this miracle of salvation from the half-life she was in?
“I think you know who this is?” The voice said calmly.
Yes, she did, and this brought on a whole new set of fears. She had grown up in the church, attending services every Sunday. Although she had lapsed from her faith, this voice was the one her fiery pastor had warned her about. This was the “enemy.”
She didn’t suspect he had horns and carried a red pitchfork, but she knew he certainly did not reside inside the shiny gates of heaven. But so what? He was offering her something she could never attain on her own. A return to what she had been before she had been bitten by a zombie. Before the doctor’s unholy experiment had turned her into this half-dead thing.
“What do you want?” She asked.
Again, she heard only the quiet in her head, but it was a dreadful silence. A silence filled with pacts that would doom your soul to eternally suffering. But did eternity matter if you were in unending daily torment?
“There is a city up ahead,” the voice said. “I want you to go there and wipe out every last one of them. Every last one of them. Do not even spare a single child.” Where last time the voice seemed calm and almost soothing, there was something razor-sharp and cutting to it. An edge. “Do you understand?”
“And what do I get if I do this?” she asked.
“Everything,” the voice said, and the edge was gone, replaced by an almost cheerful tone. “I’ll give you your heart’s desire?”
“What about Maxwell?” She asked. “Can you save him, too?”
“Every deal I strike is with each individual,” the voice said. “Let’s say they are confidential.”
“I need him saved, too,” she said.
She thought she heard a long and deep intake of breath, and for some reason, she felt that whoever it was had just sucked in a long stream of overheated air.
“You don’t get to make the deals, I do,” the voice said. “It is a take it or leave it deal. All or nothing. Do you want to end up like one of the pitiful creatures surrounding you?”
Whereas before, she slogged along with the zombies almost mindlessly. She looked over into their dead eyes and wondered if this was her eventuality. There was no guarantee that she wouldn’t deteriorate down into one of them - the lowest of the low. Things with no life. Creatures with no love.
“Is that where I’m headed,” she asked with an edge of panic in her voice.
“Oh, you never know, now do you?” The voice asked. “The doctors who made you this way had no idea of the fire they were playing with, and every fire burns out, doesn’t it?”
She hated the playful quality of this voice. This deal seemed too easy, even when the consequences were so sifignant. She recollected the many stories told to her in church camps. Some were about people who tried to make a deal with the devil to gain earthly riches, only to be swindled out of their eternal soul. But these were stories told by people with no real skin in the game, as they say. She had everything to lose if what the voice was hinting at was true.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
“Goooooood,” the voice said with a certain smugness, but there was no comfort in it for her.
What choice did she really have?
Chapter 25
Getting to Know Each Other
Dawn was still a couple of hours away, but few people in the Sanctum actually slept that night. In reality, few people facing their death would be able to.
The rain had fallen to a near drizzle, leaving a thickness to the atmosphere, but it had also cleansed the air, leaving it feeling fresher. Even with tension humming through everyone inside, there was a guarded optimism that they would prevail. Maybe it was because contemplating anything else was too terrible to conceive.
Ellen, Henry, and Molly had elected to serve the cause of protecting the Sanctum from the east side of the perimeter, trying to get as far from Eli and his goons as they could. There was very little doubt he knew about Henry and Molly springing Ellen from the brig but knew they had to be so far down on Eli’s radar, they had to be safe.
“Maybe we should make a run for it,” Molly said. “Eli is going to be pissed.”
“Shhhh,” Ellen said, cutting her eyes in both directions, taking an inventory of which of the people closest to them were Sanctum people. They elected to take up positions on the wall facing the east. At least two people positioned themselves at regular intervals on the wall. Each one had at least one weapon at hand. Ellen only noticed a couple of their people mixed in the clusters.
“We’re already on his shit list,” Molly said,
In a half-whisper, Ellen said, “We’ve got nowhere to go.”
“That horde is only an hour or two away,” Henry added. “There is no running.”
“It probably won’t matter anyway,” Molly said. “We’ll most likely be dead by noon.”
Henry leaned in close to her and said, “You can’t think that way.”
“Okay,” Molly said, “since we’re on the far side of the Sanctum, we might make it to mid-afternoon.”
Henry rolled his eyes at her and turned to his mother. “What do you think’s going to happen after this?”
Ellen looked pensive for a moment, then said, “Molly does have a point. There is a chance that some of us won’t make it, but as far as I’m concerned, we have to remember what your father used to always say-- let tomorrow take care of tomorrow. We have to make it through the day.”
“Cheery, but pragmatic,” Molly said.
Ellen turned to Molly, and it looked like she was taking an inventory of her.
“What!?” Molly asked.
“You are not the person I would have picked for Henry and, truth be told, I would have wanted this to happen at a much later point in time. Like years from now, but you do have a lot of spunk.”
“Spunk!?” Molly said. “It makes me sound like I’m living in a 1940s black and white movie. Like, ‘Go win one for the Gipper’ or some shit.”
“Please don’t spoil this,” Ellen said. “Let me say this. You have some rough edges and quirky characteristics, but I think you have some good qualities for Henry.”
“Mom, really,” Henry said as his cheeks flushed with color. “Is this the time for this?”
Ellen looked to Henry and said, “Well, as Molly said, any of us could be dead by this time tomorrow.” She returned her attention to Molly. “You have to treat my son well. He’s a good...good young man.”
“Well, if we’re laying it out on the table,” Molly said, “he’s much too straight and goody, goody for me.”
Henry stared at Molly with his mouth partially open.
Molly put both of her hands up in the air and said, “Wait. Wait.” She quickly read her audience. “At least at first, but he’s grown on me.“ She leaned toward Henry and fell into his shoulder and slipped her hand around his waist. “He’s grown on me a lot.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Ellen said, but she was clearly caught up in some mixed emotions.
“Don’t worry, big momma, I’ll treat your boy right,” Molly said.
Ellen’s expression hardened, and she leaned in closer to Molly, then said in a flinty tone, “You better.”
Molly started to open her mouth, but Henry elbowed her in the side, and she got it. Still, he shot him a hairy eyeball look.
Henry turned his attention to his mother and said, “Mom, it’s going to be okay.”
Too bad, it wouldn’t be okay. Not for the three of them.
Chapter 26
Flight Plans
Jones slapped his hand on the side of the helicopter and said, “Garver, it’s time to get up in the air.”
“It’s still raining,” Garver said, pointing toward the sky.
“You’ve been up in worse conditions,” Jones said. “Lots worse.”
Garver took a glance at the other chopper, where Bradbury was doing a walk-around inspection of the craft. “It’s the kid,” Garver said. “He’s not ready.”
“He did a good job in the attack run on the zombies outside the walls,” Jones said.
“But the weather conditions were perfect,” Garver said.
Jones sucked in a breath and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but he has to be ready or not. This thing is going down. The zombies are on their final approach path. I want to know how many we have on the way, and if any of our efforts have cut down their numbers. We also need to see if this rain has fucked any of that up.”
“Can’t you tell that from the top of that...that domed building?” Garver said. “The white dome thing.”
“That’s the convention center,” Jones said, and Garver nodded. “That won’t get us what I think we need. We need to be up in the air and hell of a lot closer.”
“But--” Garver started, but Jones cut him off.
“There is no but,” Jones said. “We are going up, and we’re doing it now. Get the engines revving, and I’ll get the men to go up with us.”
Garver didn’t meet Jones’ eyes but said, “Yes, sir.”
Ten minutes later, in the flagging rainfall coating everyone in a misty wetness, Jones gathered the troops between the two helicopters as the rain gently fell. Berry was there with the Martinez kid. At least that’s how Jones viewed him, but with each year he had in the forces, there seemed to be more and more kids around him. He acknowledged that was one of the dangers of getting older. The kids coming in were always young, while he just kept getting older.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 12
